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SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



LETTERS OF 
SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



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EDITED BY 

ANNIE FIELDS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1911 






COPYRIGHT, igil, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October igii 






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NOTE 

The editor regrets that a friendly message 
from Mr. William Dean Howells offering 
letters from Miss Jewett for publication ar- 
rived too late to insert them in these pages. 



LETTERS 



For Lovers' eyes more sharply-sighted be 
Than other men's, and in dear Love's delight 
See more than any other eyes can see. 

But they who love indeed, look otherwise 
With pure regard and spotless true intent, 
Drawing out of the object of their eyes 
A more refined form which they present. 

Love thereon fixeth all his fantasie, 
And fully setteth his felicitie, 
Counting it fairer than it is indeed, 
And yet indeed its fairness doth exceed! 

Spenser's Hymn in Honour of Beauty. 



LETTERS OF SARAH ORNE 
JEWETT 

IN the village of South Berwick, Maine, 
which had always been Miss Jewett's 
home, she died June 24, 1909. This 
village has been no exception to the changes 
inevitably advancing in the life of small towns 
in New England. The immediate vicinities of 
villages are becoming more beautiful, more 
developed, day by day, while the encroach- 
ment of manufacturing, especially where there 
are full flowing water-courses, brings multi- 
tudes of mill people into the heart of the 
little towns, and as the old English descend- 
ants die out, they are naturally replaced by 
men, women, and children, who can run the 
manufactories. Formerly Berwick was in the 
"deestrict" of Maine, as Lowell loved to 
call it. Portsmouth then seemed the capital 
of New England and the governors and cler- 
gymen thereof were rulers and potentates, 
bending the knee only to the King of the 
Fatherland and the great God in Heaven ; 
and Berwick was not far from Portsmouth, 



4 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

even in those days. The beautiful river Pis- 
cataqua swept good-sized vessels up to the 
very banks of the village. Here, and among 
these descendants, Sarah Orne Jewett grew up 
with hills and waters and a large open country 
all about her. This wild land she knew and 
loved well, as her books show. 

She was born September 3, 1849, going to 
the village school and later to the Berwick 
Academy, and to both rather intermittently, 
being but a delicate child. Her father was a 
physician, and when the weather was plea- 
sant he would take his wise little girl into the 
chaise by his side in the morning, instead of 
urging her to go to school. These days, out in 
the open country with her father, became the 
white mile-stones of her life. In every house 
where they stopped she knew the people were 
her father's friends. When she was tired sit- 
ting in the chaise, during his long visits, she 
would climb down and play about the green 
dooryards by herself, unless some member of 
the household happened to see her and call her 
from the side door to give her a bit of ginger- 
bread, saved or made for the doctor's child. 
Those were happy and never-to-be-forgotten 
days. But I fear there were days when father, 



LETTERS 5 

as well as child, was torn between the happiness 
of such mornings and duty to the school. 

As she grew older her interest in her father's 
work developed, and she began to question him. 
Little by little, as he found she could under- 
stand and remember what he told her, he would 
give her larger and deeper lessons, until many 
a young graduating doctor today might well 
envy that slip of a girl for the knowledge at 
first hand which had been conveyed to her 
impressionable mind. After her father's early 
death she loved to go into his of&ce to con- 
sult his diary ; she knew his papers, his books, 
his medicines, — nothing that belonged to his 
mind or his work was foreign to her. 

Her father's intelligent companionship is 
made clear to us in her published work. With 
his death came her first sorrow, — 

'^ The first of all her dead that were to be" ; 

and soon after began the correspondence con- 
tained in this volume. It is a diary in truth 
and almost unconsciously ; reminding one by 
its lightness of touch of the famous journal of 
Dean Swift to Stella, two hundred years ago. 
The same handling of " the little language " 
is here ; the same joy and repose in friendship. 



6 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

This "little language/' the private "cud- 
dling" of lovers, of mothers, and children, 
since the world began, was native also to her. 
They are the letters, too, of a true lover of na- 
ture and of one accustomed to tender commun- 
ings with woods and streams, with the garden 
and the bright air. She was no recluse, and 
loved her world of friends and was a brave 
spirit among them ; using herself to the top 
of her bent in spite of trammelings of ill 
health. To one who seldom if ever knew the 
joy of springing early from her bed, with the 
thought of a new day, life was contracted and 
hampered ; but in the hours of health allowed 
her, it was enjoyed with the chastened spirit 
of one who already knew the sufferings of 
others and could sympathize with their dis- 
abilities. She disliked profoundly all talk of 
illness and complaining, and demanded no 
sympathy; but her inherited love of helping 
the unfortunate led her to study methods of 
relief, and if she had been a strong person she 
would have studied medicine in the medical 
schools. As it was, her gift was undeniable, 
and the physicians of her acquaintance have 
borne testimony to her instinctive power of 
discernment and helpfulness. 



LETTERS 7 

Many years later, in 1893, when an illus- 
trated edition of her first book, " Deephaven," 
was published, we find affixed to the volume a 
new preface which contains some of her very 
best and most autobiographical writing. After 
speaking of the changes creeping over the old 
village life and the many excellent reasons 
therefor, she says : '' Old farmhouses opened 
their doors to the cheerful gayety of summer ; 
the old jokes about the respective aggressions 
and ignorances of city and country cousins 
gave place to new compliments between the 
summer boarder and his rustic host. The 
young writer of these Deephaven sketches was 
possessed by a dark fear that townspeople 
and country people would never understand 
one another, or learn to profit by their new 
relationship. It seemed not altogether reason- 
able when timid ladies mistook a selectman 
for a tramp, because he happened to be cross- 
ing a field in his shirt-sleeves. At the same 
time, she was sensible of grave wrong and mis- 
understanding when these same timid ladies 
were regarded with suspicion, and their kind- 
nesses were believed to come from pride and 
patronage. There is a noble saying of Plato 
that the best thing that can be done for the 



8 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

people of a state is to make them acquainted 
with one another. It was happily in the writ- 
er's childhood that Mrs. Stowe had written of 
those who dwelt along the wooded seacoast 
and by the decaying, shipless harbors of Maine. 
The first chapters of ^ The Pearl of Orr's 
Island' gave the young author of 'Deep- 
haven ' to see with new eyes, and to follow 
eagerly the old shore -paths from one gray, 
weather-beaten house to another, where Genius 
pointed her the way. . . . There will also exist," 
Miss Jewett continues, " that other class of 
country people who preserve the best tradi- 
tions of culture and of manners, from some 
divine inborn instinct toward what is simplest 
and best and purest, who know the best be- 
cause they themselves are of kin to it. Human 
nature is the same the world over, provincial 
and rustic influences must ever produce much 
the same effects upon character, and town life 
will ever have in its gift the spirit of the pre- 
sent, while it may take again from the quiet 
of the hills and fields and the conservatism of 
country hearts a gift from the spirit of the 
past." 

If the high end and purpose of her work 
gave her joy, so also did the recognition of it 



LETTERS 9 

by others on the way give her pleasure ; as 
when T. B. Aldrich once wrote : '^ A great 
many thanks for your very kind note about 
the July ^ Atlantic' Whenever you give me 
one of your perfect little stories the whole 
number seems in bloom ! " A letter, too, from 
Rudyard Kipling gave her unending pleasure, 
in which he says, speaking of the " Country 
of the Pointed Firs" : "I am writing to you 
to convey some small instalment of our satis- 
faction in that perfect little tale. It 's immense 
— it is the very life. So many of the people 
of lesser sympathy have missed the lovely 
New England landscape, and the genuine New 
England nature." He adds jovially in the 
postscript, "I don't believe even you know 
how good that work is." 

A certain sweet dignity of character dis- 
tinguished Miss Jewett ; one which never put 
a barrier between her and any one else, but 
was a part of her very self ; with all her wit 
and humor and kind ways there was no sug- 
gestion leading to sudden nearness nor too 
great intimacy. 

Her metier was, to lay open, for other eyes 
to see, those qualities in human nature which 
ennoble their possessors, high or low, rich or 



10 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

poor ; those floods of sympathy to be unsealed 
in the most unpromising and dusty natures by 
the touch of a divining spirit. Finding herself 
in some dim way the owner of this sacred 
touchstone, what wonder that she loved her 
work and believed in it ? 

After a severe carriage accident once, she 
wrote to me : "I was strongly tempted to say 
yes about Wednesday. ... I long to see you 
more than I can say, but I am almost afraid 
to make a break just now lest I could n't get 
going again, and there are three chapters at 
least that I must get done before I feel really 
certain about anything. When I have them 
safe landed like little fishes, I can take my 
time. Oh, if I can only get this work done so 
that you will be pleased and a little proud 
about it, it seems to me that I shall ask for 
nothing more. I am so afraid that I can't give 
it breadth and largeness enough, and that it 
will have a dull kind of excellence and not 
real life and vitality." 

She was not born to a large city and was 
unaccustomed to public business and stir, but 
she was always ready to do what she could. 
When meetings of societies were called in the 
village, and Miss Jewett was asked to receive 



LETTERS 11 

two or three delegates as guests, she was always 
glad to do so. She interrupts one of her notes 
to say: — 

"I must look sharp after Miss Eickett and 
the rest. They were at their meetings all day 
yesterday, getting home in the evening at 
eleven at night, or a few minutes before, but 
they would not like to be called dissipated, I 
am sure." 

Her eagerness to make life a little easier for 
others was always on the alert, as when she 
burst out in one of her notes : ^' Oh, do let us 
always tell people when we like their work — 
it does do so much good." Mrs. Meynell, 
writing of Miss Jewett, in a late letter, says : 
"I always thought of her as the most selfless 
creature I had ever known ; a few hours in 
her dear company convinced me of that ; and 
her letters are inevitably like her." 

But these fragments from her letters carry 
us too far afield. They shall be given freely in 
the following pages, in order to show her life 
as in a mirror, while the days sped on. They 
will show, above all, the portrait of a friend 
and the power that lies in friendship to sus- / 

tain the giver as well as the receiver. They 
are in the easy undress of e very-day hf e, wear- 



12 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

ing a grace which lies beyond all thought 
of the larger world. 



(to MRS. fields) 

Little Compton, R. I., 8 September^ 1880. 

Dear Mrs. Fields, — This is not a land 
where it is easy to write letters. I can't help 
being idle, except in thought, and I think I 
never knew so quiet a country. It is all like 
the places one goes to on the way to sleep. 
There are n't any high hills, but you look over 
the fields which are so like moors, and you 
look and look, and there is nothing you have 
to stop and wonder about, the big round- 
headed windmills are all still, and today is a 
grey day which can't make up its mind to 
take the trouble to rain, and here we are sit- 
ting by the fireplace, and I was busy watch- 
ing the smoke until I thought I would write a 
letter or two. And whether I drive or sail I 
am the most placid and serene of all your 
friends, and I forget that I ever was a girl 
who could n't go to sleep at night. 

After this first letter the days passed with- 
out any record which has been preserved, until 



LETTERS 13 

bits of diary occur written during her life at 
South Berwick in the following years. 

" The country is beautiful to look at, but 
it is such clear cold weather that you feel as 
if you were under a great block of clear, shin- 
ing ice, instead of air and sky. There is a 
grey cloud-bank hanging over the sea all along 
the eastern horizon and I think it is going to 
snow again, or rain. The wood-sleds are creep- 
ing out of the woods and into the village, and 
the oxen are like rocks from the pastures, or 
the tops of ledges, they look so hard and 
tough and frosted over. 

You are Hke my monkey and the jack-in- 
the-box with your meetings. Some day you 
will get up a big one that will scare you to 
death." 

Tuesday, 1882. 

I hate to keep sending you letters instead 
of going to you myself, but by and by there 
will be no letters at all. Your little word of 
last night has just come and I wish I were 
going to be there to welcome you home from 
the perils of Bridgewater.^ It is a hot, tire- 

^ Bridge water State Farm, which was then a most unpala- 
table place. 



14 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

some day, and I did not get up until very late, 
and what book do you think I read in bed ? 
A hand-book of Anatomy, and I found it very 
interesting. Sometimes I think I should like 
to give up the world, the f — , and the d — , 
and be a doctor, though very likely I am 
enough of one already to get the best of it 
for myself, and perhaps I have done as much 
as I ever could for other people. 

Saturday morning, 1882. 

I have just seen the notice of Longfellow's 
death, and while it was hardly a surprise, still 
it gave me a great shock. Are not you glad 
that we saw him on that pleasant day when 
he was ready to talk about books and people, 
and showed so few signs of the weakness and 
pain which troubled us in those other visits? 
It will always be a most delightful memory, 
and it is all the better that we did not dream 
it was your last good-bye. I can't help saying 
that I am glad he has gone away before you 
had to leave him and know it was the last 
time you should see him. I dreaded your get- 
ting the news of this after we were on the other 
side of the sea, darling ! After all, it is change 
; that is so hard to bear, change grows every 



LETTERS 15 

year a harder part of our losses. It is fitting 
over our old selves to new conditions of things, 
without the help of the ones who made it 
easier for us to live, and to do our best that 
is so hard ! I have just been thinking that a 
life like that is so much less affected by death 
than most lives. A man who has written as 
Longfellow wrote, stays in this world always 
to be known and loved — to be a helper and 
a friend to his fellow men. It is a grander 
thing than we can wholly grasp, that life of 
his, a wonderful life, that is not shut in to 
his own household or kept to the limits of his 
e very-day existence. That part of him seems 
very little when one measures the rest of him 
with it, and the possibilities of this imperfect 
world reach out to a wide horizon, for one's 
eye cannot follow the roads his thought and 
influence have always gone. And now what 
must heaven be to him ! This world could 
hardly ask any more from him : he has done 
so much for it, and the news of his death 
takes away from most people nothing of his 
life. His work stands like a great cathedral 
in which the world may worship and be taught 
to pray, long after its tired architect goes 
home to rest. 



16 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

I cannot help thinking of those fatherless 
daughters of his. I know they were glad and 
proud because he was famous and everybody 
honored him, and they are being told those 
things over and over in these days, and are 
not comforted. Only one's own faith and 
bravery help one to live at first. 

March 24. 

Today is father's birthday. I wonder if peo- 
ple keep the day they die for another birthday 
after they get to heaven ? I have been think- 
ing about him a very great deal this last day 
or two. I wonder if I am doing at all the things 
he wishes I would do, and I hope he does not 
get tired of me. 

After a long season, passed chiefly in Eng- 
land and France, Miss Jewett wrote from 
South Berwick in the autumn : — 

Thursday, 6 Octobevy 1882. 

Here I am at the desk again, all as natural 
as can be and writing a first letter to you with 
so much love, and remembering that this is the 
first morning in more than seven months that 
I have n't waked up to hear your dear voice 
and see your dear face. I do miss it very mugh, 



LETTERS 17 

but I look forward to no long separation, which 
is a comfort. It was lovely in the old house 
and I did so wish you had come down, too, it 
was all so sweet and full of welcome, and 
Hannah and Annie and John and Hilborn and 
Lizzie Pray all in such a state because I had 
got home ! 

[1883.] 

I shall be with you tomorrow, your dear 
birthday. How I am looking forward to Thurs- 
day evening. I don't care whether there is 
starlight or a fog. Yes, dear, I will bring the 
last sketch and give it its last touches if you 
think I had better spend any more time on it. 
Lam tired of writing things. I want now to 
paint things, and drive things, and kiss things, 
and yet I have been thinking all day what a 
lovely sketch it would be to tell the story of 
the day we went to Morwenstow, with bits of 
" Lorna Doone " and " The Vicar " intertwined 
with the narrative. 

I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences 
— the Jane Welsh Carlyle, as you may sup- 
pose. How could people have made such a fuss 
about it. It seems to grow more and more 
simple and beautiful and human, and Carlyle 
is like a "great stone face" on a mountain 



18 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

top. Good-night, and God bless you, dear 
love. 

Monday evening, 1883. 

Today I have been reading hard, in Thierry 
chiefly, with some other big books alongside, 
and I feel as if I had been over-eating with 
my head ! ! ! I try to think how fortunate it 
is that I should be well paid for learning a 
thing that I ought to know at any rate, but 
all that period is very difficult for any one to 
straighten out who has not been a student of 
history. It is so important and such a key-note 
to later English history, that I think of the 
early Britons all sound asleep under the green 
grass of Salisbury Plain, and feel as if they 
would have been quite within my grasp ! When 
I read the " Saturday Keview " and " Specta- 
tor" I find myself calling one politician a 
Saxon and the next a Norman ! Indeed I can 
pick them out here in Berwick! 

The wet weather has kept us in, but we did 
manage to get a drive yesterday among the 
green fields and trees. Do you think the 
country ever looked so lovely as it does this 
summer ? I seem to have brought new eyes 
home from last year's travels ! My mind is 



LETTERS 19 

vexed witk " Clarissa Harlowe." Zola is not 
half so unpleasant, we are not worse, but better, 
when he writes as he does and we read. But 
the shrewdness of workmanship, the clever 
maintenance of interest are amazing. It fools 
my mind in a way that naughty books of the 
French sort never do. So much for Clarissa, 
a person of many misfortunes, but I learn a 
good deal and profit much from the old novel, 
it accounts for so much in literary traditions. 

Sunday, 24 June, 

Dearest, — More than once I have really 
been with you on the piazza, looking out to 
sea, but the rest of me was here in church, 
waiting for a very long sermon to be done. 
It was such an old-fashioned discourse that 
it "carried me back" more than it is likely 
to carry me forward, I fear. I don't know who 
the old minister was, but the day is so hot 
that the congregation was a very sleepy one. 

I am thinking and planning my stories over 
and over, and first of all seems to come the 
gray man. It was very funny ; I had the soli- 
tary man whom I talked about at first, and 
then came the " man who never smiled," and 
I coquetted over these two estimable charac- 



20 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

ters for some days, when suddenly without 
note or warning they turned a double somer- 
sault and one swallowed the other, and I found 
they were really one person ! The Gray Man 
was masquerading a little, that was all, and 
by this time I have ever so many notes about 
him and I long to write him all down before 
I see you again. 

Sunday evening. 

I wonder if your pine boughs smell as sweet 
as mine tonight? Also I wonder if it is going 
to rain 1 I went to church this morning, and 
have been reading all the afternoon, chiefly 
the last volume of Dickens' Letters, and I 
thought of you at every turn. What a lovely 
spirit there is in them ! I think his letters to 
his sons, as they went away to the army or 
to Australia, are wonderfully beautiful. It 
was good to have the book fresh in my mind 
again. Now, dear, I have at last, after much 
grumbling and groaning, got my next two 
numbers of the "Marsh Island" ready for 
the printer, and I take a long breath, being 
free until February. The second of the two 
was not half so bad as I expected, and some 
day or two in town will work wonders with 



LETTERS 21 

the rest. If I had another week I would 
write the McClure story, and what a triumph- 
ant Pinny ^ that would be, ladies. 

Mother is reading the Parson Hawker book, 
with seeming joy, and I don't think she will 
mind in the least being left alone. I begin to 
feel dreadfully confused about Christmas now 
that the story is off my mind for a little while, 
but we shall soon talk about things, shan't 
we? and in this next week I shall come quite 
to my senses. 

Does Sandpiper 2 play with you, or has she 
married a ghost and therefore she cannot 
come? (Marigold being " excused" on account 
of following after Clark and Brown's Oxen.) 
Did you see the interview with "thy friend"^ 
and the remark that the best parlor was stiff 
and prim? I think that was quite an unneces- 
sary comment, but a very observing inter- 
viewer, ladies. 

I wonder how far you have got in the 
Swedenborg book? I keep a sense of it under 

^ She was called " * Pinny,' Ladies," she once wrote, " be- 
cause she was so straight and thin and her head no bigger 
than a pin's." 

2 Her pet name for Celia Thaxter. 

» Whittier. 



22 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

everything else. How such a bit of founda- 
tion lifts up all one's other thoughts together, 
and makes us feel as if we really stood higher 
and could see more of the world. I am going 
to hunt up some of the smaller books of 
extracts, etc., that Professor Parsons gave 
me. Oh! the garden is so splendid! I never 
dreamed of so many hollyhocks in a double 
row and all my own ! 

Thursday night, 1884. 

This morning I read Mr. Arnold's " Nine- 
teenth Century " paper with great joy. What 
a great man he is ! That holds the truth of 
the matter if anything does. It is all very 
well to say, as Mr. Blaine does, " What busi- 
ness has England ? " The association of dif- 
ferent peoples is after all beyond human con- 
trol : we are " mixed and sorted " by a higher 
power. And looked at from the human side, 
what business has one nation to keep another 
under her authority, but the business of the 
stronger keeping the weaker in check when 
the weaker is an enemy? It had to be settled 
between England and Ireland certainly — for 
the two races were antagonistic, and England 
could not have said "no matter, she may 
plague me and fight me as she pleases." Law 



LETTERS 23 

and order come in, and Ireland has a right to 
complain of being badly governed, — so has a 
child or any irresponsible person, but we can't 
question the fact that they must be governed. 
Ireland is backward, and when she is equal to 
being independent, and free to make her own 
laws, I suppose the way will be opened, and 
she will be under grace of herself, instead of 
tutors and governors in England. Everybody 
who studies the case, as Mr. Arnold has, be- 
lieves that she must still be governed. I don't 
grow very sentimental about Ireland's past 
wrongs and miseries. If we look into the his- 
tory of any subject country, or indeed of any 
country at all, the suffering is more likely to 
be extreme that length of time ago, and I 
think as Mr. Arnold does, and as Mr. Lowell 
did, that the mistake of our time is in being 
governed by the ignorant mass of opinion, in- 
stead of by thinkers and men who know some- 
thing. How great that was of Gladstone, 
" He has no foresight because he has no in- 
sight." Mr. Arnold never said a wiser thing, 
and when he says that Gladstone will lead his 
party (after describing what the party lacks) 
by watching their minds and adapting his 
programme and using his ease of speech to 



U SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

gain the end — He is a party leader, and not 
a statesman. Does n't it seem as if it must fret 
a man like Arnold to the quick to go on say- 
ing things as he has and seeing people ignore 
them, then dispute them, then say that they 
were God's truth, when the whole thing has 
become a matter of history and it is too late 
to have them do the immediate good he hoped 
toejffiect? 

Sunday night, November, 1884. 

I am getting sleepy, for I must confess that 
it is past bedtime. I went to church this morn- 
ing, but this afternoon I have been far afield, 
way over the hill and beyond, to an unusual 
distance. Alas, when I went to see my be- 
loved big pitch-pine tree that I loved best of 
all the wild trees that lived in Berwick, I 
found only the broad stump of it beside the 
spring, and the top boughs of it scattered far 
and wide. It was a real affliction, and I 
thought you would be sorry, too, for such a 
mournful friend as sat down and counted the 
rings to see how many years old her tree was, 
and saw the broad rings when good wet sum- 
mers had helped it grow and narrow ones 
when there had been a drought, and read as 
much of its long biography as she could. But 



LETTERS 25 

the day was very lovely, and I found many plea- 
sures by the way and came home feeling much 
refreshed. I found such a good little yellow 
apple on one of the pasture trees, and I 
laughed to think how you would be looking 
at the next bite. It was very small, but I nib- 
bled it like a squirrel. I found a white-weed 
daisy fully blown, but only an inch high, so 
that it looked as if somebody had snapped it 
off and dropped it on the ground ; and I was 
in some underbrush, going along the slope, 
and saw a crow come toward me flying low, 
and when I stood still he did not see me and 
came so close that I could hear his wings 
creak their feathers — and nearly in the same 
spot I thought I heard the last of the '' creak- 
its." I wished for you so much, it was a day 
you would have loved. 

Friday evening, South Berwick [1885]. 

Today has been very hot and I have read 
with great delight the book of Edwin Arnold's, 
which I did n't send back after all, and I am 
most glad to have it. More than that I want 
you to read parts of it, for it is charmingly 
done, so modest and manly and wise, and when 
he gets to Ceylon all the Buddhists turn out 



26 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

to do him honor. He has a grave conference 
with an old priest, who thanks him for what 
he has done for Buddhism, and then Arnold 
asks him if there are any Mahatmas, to which 
the priest answers no, none at all 1 If we had 
better interpreters of Buddha's teaching we 
might reach heights and depths of power and 
goodness that are now impossible; but we 
have fallen from the old wisdom and none of us 
today are so advanced. There are all sorts of 
interesting things in this "India Kevisited"; 
one is that the Mayflower was chartered for 
the East Indian trade after her Pilgrim expe- 
riences, and was sunk on her last voyage with 
a cargo of rice ! ! I don't know why I found 
that so wildly interesting ! ! 

June, 1885. 

Such a hot and agreeable day as yesterday 
was ! We played on the beach at Wells, but 
not quite so hard as at York, the sun being 
hotter. I got pretty tired, but enjoyed it all 
vastly, and met with many old and fond friends 
at the fish-houses, — R M , and F , 



whom I wrote the story about, and old D 

B , who can't go out fishing any more, so 

that he sits at home and knits stockings and 
thinks on his early days as an able seaman in 



LETTERS 27 

foreign parts. His wife died two or three years 
ago and he calls her " Poor dear! " when he 
talks about her. And there was big C. D. and 
big H. R., who pulled him out of the waves in 
an adverse squall at the Banks once, so that 
they are famous pals; all the old fishermen 
whom I have known since these many years ; 

and A and L P and younger 

fry, who were also cordial and yet not so 
dear. I lagged along from one fish-house door 
to the next, and thought I was n't going to see 

D B , the knitter, but early in the 

afternoon he rolled along as if he trod a quar- 
ter-deck all the way, and mentioned after a 
time that he saw me driving down — he saw 
a team and got his glass and found out it 
was I. My heart was quite touched when I 
found that he had n't been over to the moor- 
ings but once before this spring! I don't 
think from the looks of him that he will be 
missing "Poor dear" a great while longer. 
Yet he asked for some good books of stories, 
detective ones, none of your lovesick kind, 
which he could n't go ! I must betake me to 
Wells again before long with a selection of 

literary offerings, G H , the elder, 

being also a great reader, but of another stamp 



28 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and really one of the best-Informed men I ever 
knew, never forgetting anything apparently ; 
and when I tried to tell him about being at 
St. Augustine, he told me the Indian names 
at the Fort, and much else that had slipped 
my mind. The drive home was as lovely as it 
could be, the country so green and the farms 
all so tidy, and the sheep and cattle thick in 
the pastures, with such a sunset across all the 
western sky. 

This morning I have been to church, and 
this afternoon I rested and read, chiefly the 
" Alchemist," which is a great story, all the 
early part of it. I think that Balzac got tired 
of it toward the end — there where he makes 
Margaret regain her lost fortune over and 
over, as a lobster grows a new clav. 

Thursday afternoon, 23 July, 1885. 

Now comes the news of General Grant's 
death, which is a relief in a way. I think no- 
thing could be more pathetic than the records 
of his last fight with his unvanquishable 
enemy. No two men I have ever seen came 
up to Grant and Tennyson in greatness. 
Tennyson first, I must say that. Good heav- 
ens, what a thing it is for a man of Grant's 



LETTERS ' 29 

deliberate, straightforward, comprehending 
mind, to sit day after day with that pain 
clutching at his throat, looking death straight 
in the face ! and with all his clear sight he was 
no visionary or seer of spiritual things. It 
must have made him awfully conscious of all 
that lay this side the boundary. And now 
he knows all, the step is taken, and the mys- 
terious moment of death proves to be a mo- 
ment of waking. How one longs to take it for 
one's self ! 

Thursday evening, 1886. 

This table is so overspread with the story 
of the Normans that I can hardly find room 
to put my paper down on it. I started in for 
work this afternoon, having been on the strike 
long enough, as one might say; but I only 
did a little writing, for I found that I must 
read the whole thing through, I have forgot- 
ten so much of it. 

Do read Miss Preston's paper about Pliny 
the younger in the "Atlantic." It is full of 
charming things, and as readable as possible. 
It sent me to my old favorite, the elder Pliny's 
" Natural History," but I could n't find it in 
any of the book-cases downstairs, and I was too 
lazy to go up for it. Oh, you should see the old 



30 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

robin by my bed-room window a-fetching up 
her young family ! I long to have you here 
to watch the proceedings. She is a slack house- 
keeper, is that robin, for the blown-away ruffles 
that she wove into her nest have suffered so 
much from neglect, combined with wind and 
weather, that they ravel out in unsightly 
strings. But oh, the wide mouths of the three 
young ones, — how they do reach up and 
gape altogether when she comes near the nest 
with a worm ! How can she attend to the mu- 
ral decorations of her home ? I am getting to 
be very intimate with the growing family. I 
hate every pussy when I think what a paw 
might do. I waited by the window an hour 
at tea-time, spying them. 

I have finished "Pendennis" with deep 
regret, for I have enjoyed it enormously. It 
is truly a great story, more simple and sin- 
cere and inevitable than " Vanity Fair." It 
seems as much greater than Tolstoi's " Anna 
Karenina " as it is more full of true humanity. 
It belongs to a more developed civilization, to 
a far larger interpretation of Christianity. But 
people are not contented at reading ^^ Penden- 
nis" every few years and with finding it al- 
ways new as they grow more able to under- 



LETTERS SI 

stand it. Thackeray is so great, a great Chris- 
tian. He does not affect, he humbly learns and 
reverently tries to teach out of his own ex- 
perience. ^' Pendennis " belongs to America 
just now more than it belongs to England, 
but we must forget it and go and read our 
Russian. Yes, he has a message too, but most 
people understand it so little that he amuses 
them and excites their wonder like Jules 
Verne. 

I am writing before breakfast. I have fin- 
ished "Hugh Wynne" and loved it, with its 
fresh air and manliness, and — to me — ex- 
quisite charm. Don't you know what Tenny- 
son said : " I love those large, still books ! " 

Monday morning. 

Little old Miss Elizabeth C. is dead at 
ninety-two, after a miserable year or two when 
all of her has been dead but her small body. 
I went down to see her nephew, and found 
him as bereaved as possible. I don't go into 
the old house very often, but yesterday I was 
so moved by the sight of certain things, and 
especially of an ottoman on which I used to 
sit very high in the air and perilous, both with 
a sense of the occasion, and being off sound- 



32 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

ings as to the floor. Such pound-cakes as I 
have eaten on that ottoman ! Somehow all the 
hospitality of those days came back in touch- 
ing contrast to the empty, womanless rooms 
yesterday. Miss C. has always been a recluse. 
I have seldom seen her on the street and 
but a few times at church. She would have 
been a nun in early days. The bustling world 
was always too much for her. Dear, kindly 
soul that she was, with a pair of beautiful child- 
like blue eyes, which seemed forever young, 
though I can't remember when her thin bent 
little figure did n't look old. She always hid 
away from the gayeties of the house. Her 
mother was a kind of little old duchess with 
great social faculty, a friend of Lafayette in 
the war times, so that on his royal progress he 
took pains to come to see her. I used to hear 
the call related with great particularity when 
I was a little girl. These were Boston Cush- 
ings originally, and were for a long time new- 
comers, having moved to Berwick in 1795, 
when Berwick, though small, was as proper a 
place to live in as Boston, " at least so thinks " 
Madam Gushing. I must not forget to tell you 
that Miss Elizabeth said a year or two ago, 
when that base-looking Methodist Church was 



LETTERS 33 

building near by, " Charles, is that a ship 
I see? when are they going to launch?" It 
was a curious memory of her childish visits at 
the old Wallingford house, her grandfather's, 
which stood across the river from the Hamil- 
ton house, when ships were built there and 
the river, so quiet now, was a busy place. Too 
much of Miss Elizabeth, says a patient friend, 
but I am always delighting in reading the old 
Berwick, picturesque as it was, under the 
cover of the new life which seems to you so 
dull and unrewarding in most ways. " Where 
every prospect pleases," etc., ought to be your 
hymn for Berwick, the which I don't suggest 
unmercifully, but rather compassionately, and 
with a plaintive feeling at heart. 

I don't know when I have had such a de- 
lightful day of reading as I had yesterday. 
Parts of Rousseau's " Confessions " were per- 
fectly enchanting, — the bits about his walks ; 
and whatever he writes about, he is never dis- 
gusting to me, as many of his age are. I 
never began to know the " Confessions " be- 
fore. It was my first time, as Mrs. Bell says. 
I also read a good bit in Daniel's poems, and 
was so snug and lazy by a big fire in the fire- 
place. John suggests the furnace, being evi- 



34 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

dently tired of getting in enough big walnut 
logs for all the fireplaces every morning ; but 
I beg off selfishly. The house never seems 
half so pleasant when the fireplaces are cold. 
Give my dear love to Marigold ^ when you see 
her. 

Tuesday evening. 

I need not tell you what a joyful home- 
i^ coming it was. Mother's look as she came 
running out to meet Mary was something that 
I never shall forget. It was like some old 
painter's picture of a Bible scene ! With her 
arms out, and her aging face and figure. And 
such a time all the afternoon, and the un- 
packing and presents galore, and charming 
photographs as thick as the fallen leaves with- 
out. I kept wishing for you to "be to it," 
Pinny with such splendour ! Burne-Jones' 
photographs, new ones, and big! and a seal- 
skin cape to her shoulders, and an Edinburgh 
pin, and a new ivory brush (needed!), and a 
beautiful piece of best lace, and some new un- 
dergarments, and stockings, and a best white 
petticoat, and Oh such a lot of things ! I ought 
to be Sandpiper to properly enumerate and 
describe ! 

^ Mrs. James Lodge. 



LETTERS 35 

Wednesday night. 

I have had a lovely day. I felt tired and 
flustered with things to do, so I took John and 
two horses and skipped to " York Long Sands/' 
and feel the better for it. The road was 
muddy after the rain, and the country was so 
green and fresh. I was really anxious to see 
dear old Miss Barrell, having heard that she was 
very feeble. When I arrived, the house was 
orderly and so lonesome, and the good woman 
who takes care of the poor soul told me that 
she had not been sleeping for night after 
night, that her mind was gone and she could 
hardly speak. She asked if I would go up, 
and I said yes. There was the sunshiny great 
bedroom, looking out on the river, and the 
most minute, attenuated figure of my poor 
old friend in her great chair with her dinner, 
— such a careful, good dinner ! — spread be- 
fore her, and she seemed to be playing with it 
without eating, like a child. I went close to 
her and spoke to her, sad at heart with the 
change I saw, for she has evidently had a 
stroke which has dulled one side of her face. 
Then such a lovely flash of recognition ! She 
took hold of me with her poor old bird's claw 
of a hand and kissed and kissed me and tried 



Se SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

to talk ; lier eyes were full of life and of love, 
as if I had found her in the prison of her body 
and would understand. She tried to say things 
and really did manage a few short sentences, 
and I guessed at others, but alas I had to miss 
the rest; but the thought was all there, and 
she was so full of pleasure at seeing me, hav- 
ing me come to see her in prison, for I can 
think of it in no other way. Dear quaint little 
creature, nobody knows how appealing it was. 
You see I have to write you all about it. I 
dare say she does n't always know people, and 
that often her mind is gone, but she did know 
me and I knew her, and I hated to take my- 
self away from her at last. She always asked 
for Mother in the old days, and that was one 
of the things she said clearest today. All her 
touching little politenesses and acts of hospi- 
tality were evidently in her mind, but it was 
like listening to an indistinct telephone. I 
caught one flash of her old manner when I 
happened to speak of a family she disapproved. 
" Pack o' fools," she whispered, and we did 
have such a laugh, the last of all our laughs 
together, I fear me. It was dreadful when she 
said things that 1 couldn't make out, but I 
took refuge in telling her everything I could 



LETTERS 37 

think of, that she might like to hear, speaking 
slowly and clearly, and she almost always knew 
and tried to answer. Nothing was really alive 
but her eyes, like Heine's. I think she has had 
some new things to think of, in her prison. 
The good nurse hardly knew what to make of 
us, but she is very kind and capable. I dare 
say this was a sudden flicker of her old self, 
but wasn't it wonderful? Perhaps the shadow 
fell on her mind again directly, and she has 
been in the pitiful state they described ; but 
you can't think how I rejoice to think I went 
to see her. 

October. 

The two notes you sent me tonight are 
very dear prints of your footsteps along the 
path of life. A sentimental Pinny to express 
herself so, but she feels it to the bottom of 
her heart. Miss Grant ^ is in the full tide of 
successful narration. She described an ac- 
quaintance this morning as a " meek-looking 
woman, but very understanding ! " I have 
not been writing today. I should have been 
called off at any rate a good deal, so I did 
some hammering and housekeeping this morn- 
ing, and "box-pleated" sixteen breadths of 

1 The village dressmaker. 



38 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

silk ruffle this afternoon. (I think we shall have 
the little lace frock. It is not going to be a 
great deal of work, and is getting on capitally.) 

Sunday afternoon, December, 1888. 

I have just been reading Mr. Arnold's essay 
on George Sand, and finished it with tears in 
my eyes. How beautiful, and how full of in- 
spiration it is ! We cannot be grateful enough 
to either of them, and yet how little I really 
know her books ! I am willing to study French 
very hard all winter in order to read her com- 
fortably in the spring ! 

This morning at church I was dreadfully 
bored with a sermon, and I made up a first- 
rate story which will have to be written very 
soon after Christmas. I must tell you all about 
it. How soon we shall be talking now, if all 
goes well, and good-bye to letters for a while. 
Tomorrow I shall be busy getting my things 
together, and doing up Christmas bundles. I 
am not sure whether I shall take the half past 
ten train or the half past two, so go your ways, 
dear, and I hope you will find me there when 
you come home to dinner. 

That story of Tolstoi's was such an excite- 
ment that I did not sleep until almost morn- 



LETTERS 39 

ing. What a wonderful thing it is ! I long to 
talk with you about it, but do let us think a 
good deal. It startled me because I was dimly 
feeling the same kind of motive (not the same 
plan) in writing the " Gray Man." Nobody 
cared much for it, but it is the same sort of 
story, it is there. I wish that you would look 
it over and see. I believed in that story so 
that I would have published it if I had to 
make the type. If I can only feel that I am in 
the right road, in one sense nothing else mat- 
ters. I have felt something of what Tolstoi 
has been doing all the way along. I can tell 
you half a dozen stories where I tried to say 
it, " Lady Terry," " Beyond the ToU-gate " 
and this " Gray Man." Now and then it came 
clearer to me. I never felt the soul of Tolstoi's 
work until last night, something of it in Katia, 
but now I know what he means, and I know that 
I can dare to keep at the work I sometimes 
have despaired about because you see people 
are always caught by fringes of it and liked 
the stories if they liked them at all for some 
secondary quality. I know there is something 
true, and yet I myself have often looked only 
at the accidental and temporary part of 
them. 



40 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Another postcard from Mr. Freeman.^ He 
has found about Maurice ! ! and is more 
friendly than ever. How can I live up to this 
correspondence? I am going to head him off 
and keep him quiet for a while by telling him 
that I have only a few of my books at hand. 

Friday night. 

I have read most of the nice letters and en- 
joyed them so much while I sat by the light, 
talking and listening by turns. Now I have 
stolen into the office for a word. Here is El- 
dress Harriet, who has given up the things of 
this world and can say stoutly at her letter's 
end that they can "hold on fast by God," as 
the old version of the Psalms has it, through 
their Shaker faith ! And dear Mrs. Stowe, with 
her new suggestion for my happiness, stand- 
ing ready like a switchman at the division by 
the rails. How sweet her letters are, though, 
— hers to you most lovely, for it says all we 
felt, and knew she thought that evening. 

IMarch, 1889.] 

Now this is a hopeful sign. I just looked 
out of the window and some boys have found 

^ The historian. 



LETTERS 41 

a dry spot on the sidewalk and are playing 
marbles. The mud is still very deep and the 
snow-drifts very high, but the hills are like 
big leopards and tigers ready for a pounce at 
something, with their brown and white spots. 
I never was more glad to see the brown spots 
show themselves, and should n't you think the 
grass would be glad to have the snow go off, 
so that the sun can shine on it and the wind 
blow it? Once I should have been in a hurry 
to go racing off for hepaticas, but it is too 
early at any rate, and I say to myself that I 
never did care very much for those flowers, 
and I find I am growing old and lazy and can 
let them bloom and wilt again without any 
sorrow. Hepaticas are like some people, very 
dismal blue, with cold hands and faces. I had 
to stop to think about wild flowers, and I 
believe there is nothing dearer than a trig 
little company of anemones in a pasture, 
all growing close together as if they kept 
each other warm, and wanted the whole sun 
to themselves, beside. They had no business 
to wear their summer frocks so early in the 
year. 

I am bewitched with a story, though I have 
nothing to say to you about it yet. 



42 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Sunday evening, 1889. 

I have been reading " Pendennis '^ with 
such pleasure. What a beautiful story ! I long 
to read some pages to you, for the humanity 
— the knowledge of life and the sympathy 
with every-day troubles is more and more 
wonderful. It all seems new to me, and to 
follow Thackeray through the very days when 
he was at work upon it, as we can in the 
Scribner letters, is such a joy. I got " Law 
Lane " in proof yesterday in excellent season 
for the Christmas number, one would think. 
Mr. Burlingame hoped that I could shorten it 
a little, and I have been working over it. He 
has great plans for his Christmas number and 
there are many things to go in. He seems 
pleased with '' Law Lane," so is its humble 
author, but you are not to tell. I have not 
been out today, except to the garden to pick 
myself a luncheon of currants. 

Later. 

I am almost through " Pendennis." I do 
wish you would read it pretty soon ! perhaps 
next winter ! ! And a story which has been 
lagging a good while is beginning to write 
itself. Its name is " A Player Queen," and it 
hopes to be liked. Miss Preston's article looks 



LETTERS 43 

very interesting in the ^^ Atlantic," about the 
Russian novels, but I have not found the 
right half hour to read it. Oh, my dear, it is 
such a comfort to think of you in the dear 
house, with the sea calling and all the song 
sparrows singing by turns to try and make 
you sing, too. 

I was much moved by your news about 

poor Mr. E, . I am glad that the old man is 

Hkely to be released, but there is a httle round 
world of two people going to fall to pieces. 
All the better for them in some ways, too, but 
with all their provoking narrowness there is 
something very appealing in their relation to 
each other, and she is going to find life very 
hard alone, simply because it has been so nar- 
row, and she has no great outlook or prepara- 
tion for unselfish usefulness. I dare say you 
are going to be able to help her by and by, 
but now all that anybody can do for her is to 
try to make her feel that there are a few kind 
hearts that are truly sorry for her. 

Friday night, 1889. 

I thought of you today, for I was over in 
the fields and found a brookful of delicious 
crisp water-cresses, but I shall let them grow 



44 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

until you come, for I don't think anybody 
cares much for them. I pulled two or three 
and washed them in the brook and thought 
there never were any so good. Some day we 
will take a piece of bread and butter and go 
there and have a banquet. 

There is a book I wish you would take to 
Manchester for me, or is it there already? 
The life of Fox and somebody else. Since I 
read the Warren Hastings essay I have been 
wishing to pick up more about that time, and 
about Burke and Sheridan. 

Last night I had a perfect delight re- 
reading Dorothy Wordsworth's Tour in Scot- 
land. I finished it by hurrying a little at the 
end, but there is no more charming book in 
the world. It is just our book, and the way 
we enjoy things isn't it, when we are footing 
it out of doors? 

I was delighted to find so many birds to- 
day, golden robins, blackbirds, bobolinks, and 
only Sandpiper knows what else. It was 
beautiful in the fields, and so resting. 

Saturday morning, 1889. 

I am waiting for your letter to come, and it 
seems a long half hour. A thriftless person 



LETTERS 45 

when there are so many things to do, but some- 
how I did not get to sleep last night, except 
for two or three naps which were rather too un- 
easy for comfort. I had one most beautiful 
time which was after your own heart. It be- 
gan to be light, and after spending some time 
half out of the window hearing one bird tune 
up after another, I half dressed myself and 
went out and stayed until it was bright day- 
light. I went up the street, and out into the 
garden, where I had a beautiful time, and was 
neighborly with the hop-toads and with a joy- 
ful robin who was sitting on a corner of the 
barn, and I became very intimate with a big 
poppy which had made every arrangement to 
bloom as soon as the sun came up. There was 
a bright little waning moon over the hill, 
where I had a great mind to go, but there 
seemed to be difficulties, as I might be missed, 
or somebody might break into the house 
where I had broken out. Were n't you awake, 
too, very early? I thought so, and I was 
equally certain that other people were asleep. 
Really, so much happened in that hour that 
I could make a book of it — I had a great 
temptation to go to writing. 

I have done so many things today that I 



46 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

should like to write them down and see what 
they were. There was a piece gone off the 
top of the three gilded feathers on the break- 
fast room looking-glass, so I carved a feather 
top out of pine wood and stuck it on and 
gilded it most satisfactorily, and then I set 
Stubby and an impoverished friend who 
needed money for the Fourth to digging plan- 
tains out of the grass at fifteen cents the 
hundred, whereupon they doubled their dili- 
gence until they got $1.65 out of me at din- 
ner time ! ! And I transplanted a lot of Httle 
sunflowers and put hellebore on the gooseberry 
bushes and wrote a lot of notes for the " Ber- 
wick Scholar" on account of the Centennial 
arrangements, and went down street twice and 
— but I won't tell you, yes, I will — the 
little Beverly doggie came by express ! and is 
ardently beloved by Stubs, and that took 
time, and after dinner I went to Beaver Dam 
with John about a carriage painter and another 
errand, and then I dressed me all up and went 
and made two elegant calls, and then I came 
home and wrote this. 

Sunday, 5th July. 

... I have, been reading the beginning 
of " The Pearl of Orr's Island " and finding 



LETTERS 47 

it just as clear and perfectly original and 
strong as it seemed to me in my thirteenth or 
fourteenth year, when I read it first. I never 
shall forget the exquisite flavor and reality of 
delight that it gave me. I do so long to read 
it with you. It is classical — historical — 
anything you like to say, if you can give it 
high praise enough. I have n't read it for ten 
years at least, but there it is! Alas, that she 
could n't finish it in the same noble key of 
simplicity and harmony ; but a poor writer is 
at the mercy of much unconscious opposition. 
You must throw everything and everybody 
aside at times, but a woman made like Mrs. 
Stowe cannot bring herself to that cold self- 
ishness of the moment for one's work's sake, 
and the recompense for her loss is a divine 
touch here and there in an incomplete piece of 
work. I felt at the funeral that none of us 
could really know and feel the greatness of 
the moment, but it has seemed to grow more 
great to me ever since. I love to think of the 
purple flowers you laid on the coffin. 

I hope the York visit will be worth while. I 
look forward to seeing Mrs. Lawrence more than 
anything, and to the funny Indians, and the 
lights across the harbor at night. I am so glad 



48 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

you have seen the little place and know where 
I shall be. 

Thursday night, 4 December, 1889. 

Such a day ! — the weather could not be 
resisted, and I went to York — you would 
have truly loved it, for I never knew more 
delicious weather, as bright and sweet as In- 
dian summer, only more bracing. I had my 
luncheon out of doors and sat afterward in an 
old boat on the pebbles and watched the great 
waves of a high tide. I could not bear to 
come away. You never saw anything more 
beautiful than that great stretch of shore, and 
the misty sea, and the gulls, so lonely, so full, 
and &o friendly, somehow. I went chiefly for 
the sake of seeing my old friend, and found 
her in a mood that matched the day, all her 
wildness and strangeness of last summer quite 
gone, and a sweet pathos and remembrance 
come in their stead. She was so glad to see 
me, that my heart cries to think of her. — 
She said once, " I want you to thank your 
mother for bringing you into the world, you 
have been such a pleasure to me." — And 
then I must go to her closets and find her best 
cap, and a new double gown, and a better 
shoulder-shawl, and help her put them on be- 



LETTERS 49 

cause I had come ! She has grown so thin and 
small, as if she were slowly turning into a 
fairy, and it was so sweet to see her less 
troubled, though she remembered perfectly 
the last time I was there, broken as she seemed 
to me then. The sunshine filled the quaint old 
room and we had a delightful long talk, though 
once in a while she would be a little bewildered, 
and tell me over and over again about her 
sister's death. " I lay down beside her," she 
wbuld say, "and I thought she seemed very 
cold, but I put my arms round her " ; and 
then she would cry, and I would talk about 
something else, until in a minute or two she 
would be smiling again through her sad old 
tears. As long as I could see the^house, she 
was standing at her chamber window and 
waving her handkerchief to me, and I promised 
to go down again the first time I came home. 
She seems very feeble. I had a strong feeling 
that I should not see her again. I must tell 
you that she said with strange emphasis, "I 
have seen Betsey, she came one night and 
stood beside my bed; it shocked me a good 
deal, but I saw her, and one of my brothers 
came with her." As she told me this I believed 
it was the truth, and no delusion of her 



50 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

unsteady brain. I ought not to write any 
more, but somehow there is a great deal to 
tell you. 

This morning I was out, taking a drive 
about town with John and I saw such a coast 
from way up the long hillside down to the 
tavern garden, and directly afterward down 
in the village I beheld Stubby faring along 
with his sled, which is about as large as a 
postage-stamp. So I horryed it, as you say, 
and was driven up to the top of the hill street 
and down I slid over that pound-cake frost- 
ing of a coast most splendid, and meekly went 
back to the village and returned the sled. 
Then an hour later in bursts Stubby, with 
shining morning face : " There were two fel- 
lows that said Aunt Sarah was the boss, she 
went down side-saddle over the hill just like 
the rest of the hoys ! " 

I have been reading Christopher North's 
^' Genius and Character of Burns " — father's 
old Wiley and Putnam copy — with such de- 
light, and this evening I got down the poems 
and longed to have them with you. We don't 
read Burns half enough, do we ? And when 
I read again the eloquence of the Wilson book, 
I wondered at that dull placidity that was 



LETTERS 51 

lately printed in the " Atlantic/' yet I was 
most grateful to it for freshening my thought 
of the big Scotsman. Do let us read bits of 
the Burns together some time, just for the big- 
ness of his affection and praise. 

I wrote until after dark this afternoon, and 
then went out to walk in the early moonlight, 
down the street by the Academy, and even 
up on the hill back of the Academy itself. 
There was a great grey cloud in the west, but 
all the rest of the sky was clear, and it was 
very beautiful. When one goes out of doors 
and wanders about alone at such a time, how 
wonderfully one becomes part of nature, like 
an atom of quick-silver against a great mass. 
I hardly keep my separate consciousness, but 
go on and on until the mood has spent itself. 

Madame Sand's mother is astray out of a 
Dickens book, but I don't know which one. I 
wish I knew that kind of people well enough 
to write about them ; they are dreadfully in- 
teresting sometimes. Today I am plunged 
into the depths of the rural districts, and this 
promised to be one of my dear country stories 
like the "Only Son." Good heavens! what a 
wonderful kind of chemistry it is that evolves 



52 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

all the details of a story and writes thein pre- 
sently in one flash of time ! For two weeks I 
have been noticing a certain string of things 
and having hints of character, etc., and day 
before yesterday the plan of the story comes 
into my mind, and in half an hour I have put 
all the little words and ways into their places 
and can read it off to myself like print. Who 
does it? for I grow more and more sure that 
I don't! 

I am going to grapple with the difficulty 
of a run-away husband. I wish I could tell 
you all about it, but I mean to have it done 
in two or three days. I ought to be prepar- 
ing the "Dulham Ladies" and "A Gray 
Man " for " the press," but it is better to get 
hold of this new one while I can. I send you 
a " Century." Do read the Virginia girl's 
paper about the war. We have often heard 
bits of talk that match it, but those pathetic 
days have never been more truthfully and 
delicately written down. 

Saturday. 

I had a perfectly delightful evening from 
old Dr. Lord last night. I wished for you. 
He really is so interesting now. He was talk- 



LETTERS 53 

ing about his English experiences at the time 
he lived there three or four years and married 
his wife. He knew Cardinal Wiseman and 
Archbishop Whately, and Carlyle, about whom 
he talked enchantingly. It made me feel as if 
I had gone to the door in Cheyne Row and 
had "Mrs. Carlyle herself" come to open it, 
"a beautiful woman with delightful manners/' 
and Carlyle come scolding downstairs (though 
he had made the appointment himself) and 
grumbling that Americans were all bores and he 
liked the Russians, a sober, thinking and act- 
ing people, and then he would grow very good- 
natured, and after a while take his company 
for a long walk ; — cross old Dean Gaisf ord also 
appeared with that group of Oxford men. You 
could have drawn out much more, but indeed 
it was very interesting to me. Egotism is the 
best of a man after eighty'. He is chiefly val- 
uable then for what he has been, and for the\ 
wealth of his personality, and what is silly 
self-admiration at forty is a treasure of re- 
membrance. The stand-point has changed. 

I must say good-bye, but what savings we 
shall be telling over pretty soon. Don't forget 
things. 



54 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Wednesday evening 
(with a great rain on the roof of the study). 

I have been reading Mr. Arnold's "Essays 
on Celtic Poetry '' with perfect reverence for 
him and his patience and wisdom. How much 
we love him and believe in him, don't we? 
Do you know this book and the essay on 
translating Homer? I long to read it all with 
you. ,f 

Sunday evening, Autumn. 

I hope that you have had a good day. I 
have been to church myself for a wonder, 
since from one reason or another I have not 
been preached at for some months ! This after- 
noon, after the communion service, I had a 
great pleasure in seeing the very old church 
silver which is not often used, and some time 
I wish to show it to you. One exquisite old 
flagon is marked 1674, and the cups are such 
beautiful shapes. They keep it packed away 
in the bank, — very properly, — and usually 
use a new set bought thirty or forty years ago. 
I dare say that some of the old came from 
England, — it is really so interesting with all 
the givers' names and inscriptions put on in 
such quaint pretty lettering. 

Yes, it is quite magnificent about the copy- 



LETTERS 55 

right bill, and I like to have my country 
honest at last about the Spoliation Claims. I 
told Mother yesterday that she must buy a 
piece of plate and have it marked French 
Spoliation Claims, 1891, and have it handed 
down. 

You never saw such a lot of snow in your 
fcowny life as is now piled up in this single 
hamlet. It is really a huge lot, and so drifted 
and tumbled about, and every little while to- 
day the northwest wind would blow, and the 
air would be full for awhile. Jocky seems to 
think it is a very hard winter. 

Mr. Putnam has just got back from Lon- 
don, and I find that I shall probably begin 
my proofs ^ within a fortnight. I am forget- 
ting the worrisome detail a little now, and 
dread taking it up again, but perhaps they 
will hurry through and shorten my miseries. 
" Vanity Fair" is read through, a very great 
book, and for its time Tolstoi and Zola and 
Daudet and Howells and Mark Twain and 
Turgenieff and Miss Thackeray of this day 
all rolled into one, so wise and great it is and 
reproachful and realistic and full of splendid 
scorn for meanness and wickedness, which 

1 The- story of the Normans. 



5Q SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

scorn the Zola school seems to lack. And the 
tenderness and sweetness of the book is hea- 
venly, that is all I can say about it. I am 
brimful of things to say. 

Monday. 

The big ash tree in front of the house is so 
nearly dead that it must come down, and the 
big elm between here and Carrie's, the dear- 
est tree of my childhood and all my days, is 
all hollow and all the weight of it is toward 
the house, so that after much consultation we 
are afraid to let it stand through the winter, 
and that must be chopped down, too. I shall 
be glad when they are done and cleared 
away. I dread it so much that it quite haunts 
me, but I was shocked to find the other day in 
what a dangerous state the old tree was. It 
would n't be pleasant to have it prod through 
the roof; in fact, I begin to feel as if it were 
holding itself up just as long as it could, in 
a kind of misery of apprehension, poor old 
tree ! It seems as if it must know all about 
us. Then one of the spruces is also to be 
slain to let in more light; that will meet 
your approval. . . . Today I have been read- 
ing, for one thing, Mrs. Oliphant's "Royal 
Edinburgh," a most delightful book, — partic- 



LETTERS 57 

ularly the chapter about Mary Queen of Scots 
and John Knox, and the last chapter about 
Sir Walter, which we really must read to- 
gether some time. It is a beautiful piece of 
work. 

You will be much amused to hear that the 
funny old man in the linen duster whom I 
caught sight of at Chapel Station has really 
been the making of the "Atlantic" sketch. I 
mean to begin him this morning and get well 
on with him before the girls come. His name 
proves to be Mr. Teaby, and he is one of those 
persons who peddle essences and perfumery and 
a household remedy or two, and foot it about 
the country with limp enameled cloth bags. 
What do you think of Mr. Teaby now? 
Teaby is the name, and he talks with sister 
Pinkham about personal and civic matters on 
a depot platform in the rural districts. Don't 
you think an editor would feel encouraged ? 

Tuesday evening. 

Dear, — Oh, I did have such a good time 
today! I went to see some huge pine trees 
down in the edge of Wells, — an out-of-the- 
way road, but I always knew that these pines 
were the biggest in the state and had a great 



58 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

desire to see them. Oh, do go next summer 
to see the most superb creatures that ever 
grew! I don't believe that their like is in 
New England. More than four feet through 
their great trunks, and standing so tall that 
their great green tops seem to belong to the 
next world. In all my life I never was in such 
glorious woods. I long to take you there. 
Afterward I went into the farmhouse and had 
a perfectly beautiful time. I knew they were 
old patients of father's, and that he used to 
like to go there, but I was not prepared to 
find Doris and Dan Lester a dozen years older 
than when we met them last ! ! ! And they 
had read works of Pinny and were so affec- 
tionate and delightful and talked about father 
— and made a little feast for she, and it was 
a perfectly beautiful good time. 

(to t. b. aldrich) 

South Berwick, Maine. 
My dear Friend, — I am much pleased 
at hearing of your collegiate honors, and es- 
pecially (from some one who was present) of the 
delightful and hearty applause. How I should 
have clapped my hands and pounded if I had 



LETTERS 59 

been tbere ! ! Did the boys use to pound 
their feet on the floor in Portsmouth ? Only 
a very great moment on the stage of the 
village hall wins such expression here. Any- 
thing that does you and your lovely work 
honor wakes something very good and un- 
speakable in my heart. I should have seen the 
author of a poem called " Elmwood/' and a 
story called " A Bad Boy," and other poems and 
other stories, too many to count here, stand 
up in the Sanders Theatre, and I should have 
been so glad to think he and I were friends. 

I hope that there may be a little better 
news from your two old invalids — that these 
are days of less pain and discomfort. I think 
so often of you and Lilian waiting and watch- 
ing there. I am glad you are out in the 
country and not in town. With love to you 
both. 

(to MRS. fields) 

Home, Saturday afternoon. 

Mr. Howells thinks that this age frowns 
upon the romantic, that it is no use to write 
romance any more ; but dear me, how much 
of it there is left in every-day life after all. 
It must be the fault of the writers that such 



60 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

writing is dull, but what shall I do with my 
" White Heron " now she is written ? She 
is n't a very good magazine story, but I love 
her, and I mean to keep her for the beginning 
of my next book and the reason for Mrs. 
Whitman's pretty cover. In the meantime I 
will simply state that the next story is called 
" Marsh Rosemary," and I made it up as I 
drove to the station in Wells this morning. It 
deals with real life. Somehow dear, dull old 
Wells is a first-rate place to find stories in. 
Do you remember how we drove up that long 
straight road across the marshes last summer? 
It was along there the Marsh Rosemary grew. 

I have been reading an old copy of Donne's 
poems with perfect delight. They seem new 
to me just now, even the things I knew best. 
We must read many of them together. I 
must have my old copy mended ; it is quite 
shabby, with its label lost and leaves working 
out from the binding. 

Thursday morning, Decoration Day. 

There is going to be an unwonted parade 
in honor of the day and I am glad ; for usually 
everybody trots off to Dover or Portsmouth, 



LETTERS 61 

and nothing is done here except to put the 
pathetic little flags about the burying-grounds. 
It seems to me that I have just begun to un- 
derstand how grown people felt about the 
war in the time of it, — at any rate it brought 
tears to my eyes yesterday when John said 
that over two hundred men went from this 
little town to the war. You can see how many 
young sons of old farmers, and how many 
men out of their little shops, and people who 
had nobody to leave in their places, went to 
make up that number. Yesterday I went travel- 
ing in my own land, and found the most ex- 
quisite place that ever was. We followed a 
woods road into an old farm where I used to 
go with father years and years ago (the first 
time lever knew anemones, was there, I remem- 
ber). It is high on a great rocky hillside and 
deep in the woods, and what I had completely 
forgotten was the most exquisite of glens. I 
am not going to try and describe it except to 
say that I never have seen a more exquisite 
spot, and I must certainly take you to see it. 
It is so far off the road that it might be in 
the depths of the White Mountains as to 
loneliness, and it is much less often visited. 
I remember it vaguely, as a little child, when 



62 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

I saw it often, but I had completely forgotten 
it. 

I did have the most beautiful time yester- 
day afternoon. I feel as if I had seen another 
country in Europe. Oh, a great deal better 
than that, though I only went wandering 
over a great tract of pasture-land down along 
the river. You would think it is such a lovely 
place, and I shall have to write about it one 
of these days, for I saw so many things. I 
never had known anything beyond the edges of 
it before. It was the sweetest weather in the 
world, and Roger went. But last night there 
was a dismal time, for the bad bowwows got 
into the parlor together, and first thing I 
knew there was a pitched battle, arid I was 
afraid the lamps and everything would be 
tipped over before I could get hold of any- 
body's collar, and Roger passed a suffering 
night with a lame paw and broke my rest all 
to pieces with his whining, and Browny's ear 
was damaged, and dogs are at a discount. 

Wednesday evening. 

Sometimes, the business part of writing 
grows very noxious to me, and I wonder if in 
heaven our best thoughts — poet's thoughts. 



LETTERS 63 

especially — will not be flowers, somehow, or 
some sort of beautiful live things that stand 
about and grow, and don't have to be chaf- 
fered over and bought and sold. It seems as 
bad as selling our fellow beings, but being in 
this world everything must have a body, and 
a material part, so covers and leaves and pub- 
lishing generally come under that head, and 
is another thing to make us wish to fly away 
and be at rest ! 

[One day these verses came with the usual 
bulletin of prose.] 

Right here, where noisiest, narrowest is the street ; 
Where gaudy shops bedeck the crowded way ; 
Where idle newsboys in vindictive play 
Dart to and fro with venturesome bare feet ; 
Here,. where the bulletins from fort and fleet 
Tell gaping readers what 's amiss today, 
Where sin bedizens, folly makes too gay, 
And all are victims of their own conceit ; 
With these ephemeral insects of an hour 
That war and flutter, as they downward float 
In some pale sunbeam that the spring has brought, 
Where this vain world is revelling in power ; 
I met great Emerson, serene, remote, 
Like one adventuring on seas of thought. 



64 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Wednesday morning. 

I wrote hard and fast yesterday morning, 
and in the afternoon, we all went to drive, 
and had the most delightful expedition to an 
old farm up in the wild country between here 
and the sea, where the rough woods come close 
to painfully cleared little green fields and pas- 
tures. Don't you remember my telling you about 
a charming waterfall ? Well, it was there again 
that I went, but furthermore, to see a great 
view from the top of the high hill beyond. 
Then we took a wide sweep round into another 
road and so home, as Mr. Pepys says. I must 
tell you about that farmhouse at the old place, 
near the brook and fen. It stands very high, 
but has no view of the country, in summer at 
least, and a mile and a half from the main 
road. 

We went in to see old Mr. G., who has 
been long ill and for a year bedridden, but 
was sitting up at last yesterday, looking down 
the lane up which so few people are likely 
to come; but it seemed a great pleasure be- 
cause we ensued! and he absolutely cried 
when he saw mother ! He is a good old fellow, 
who in old days brought the best of walnut 



LETTERS 65 

wood and other farm-stores, and like all his 
kind, considered father and mother to be final ! 
He has left, out of a large household, only one 
son and two orphan grand-children, and there 
they live in that solitary place. The house is 
bare and clean and looks as if men kept it, 
though just as we were coming away a little 
girl came out of a wood -path, home from 
school, in a pink dress, like a shy flower. She 
will soon grow. Listen to this, dear : the man's 
wife sat in that same bare room looking down 
the lane, thirty years, and for twenty-five she 
could not feed herself, a martyr to the worst 
sort of rheumatism and everything else. One 
of the best souls in the world. It makes my 
heart ache to think of her and of all the rest 
of them ; generations have lived there, and most 
of them die young. There is a swamp back 
of the house out of which the beauty of the 
waterfall comes like a mockery of all the pain 
and trouble, as if it were always laughing. 
But those people could hardly be persuaded 
to put their house in another spot ; when the 
old one wore out thirty years ago or more, 
they built another on its cellar. There was a 
white rose-bush within reach of the old man's 
hand. Indeed, I call that region the White Rose 



66 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Koad, for every farmhouse has a tall bush by 
its front door, and yesterday they were in full 
bloom. I did n't mean to write such a long 
chapter when I began, and I must fly to my 
work. 

Don't you think it would be nice for us to 
have the " Revue " ^ again this summer just for 
a few months ? I have a feeling that I should 
like it, — and as if I wished to get as near to 
France as possible, without going there. I have 
a curious sense of delight in the fragrance that 
blows out of Madame Blanc's letter every time 
I take it out of its envelope, it is so refined, so 
personal, and of the past. 

I have the greatest joy in reading Words- 
worth lately. I can't get enough of him, and I 
take snatches of time for " The Leech-Gath- 
erer," and the other short ones, and feel as if 
I had lived a week in going through each one 
of them. 

Thursday morning. 

I mourn for poor Crabby — poor little dog ! 
I hate to think we shall never see him again. I 
never liked him so much as I have this summer, 

1 The Revue des Deux Mondes. 



LETTERS 67 

in his amiable and patient age. However, I had 
worried much about what should come next 
when he was blinder and feebler, and it is 
good to think that his days are done so com- 
fortably. I am sure all the girls felt sorry as 
we do. 

It is a grey day and looks like a cold rain, 
but John and Theodore, like " Benjy " and 
" Tom Brown," have gone to the Rochester fair, 
with smiles on their faces that seemed to tie 
behind and be quite visible as they walked 
away ! 

I have been reading " Miss Angel." It is a 
most lovely historical story. If you have n't 
got it, I want to send my little Tauchnitz one. 
Venice is so exquisitely drawn in it, and after- 
ward in London, all the life of that day. Dr. 
Johnson comes along the street as if one's own 
eyes saw him. I think you have got " Miss 
Angel," but perhaps you can't put a hand 
on it. 

I took down the two Choate volumes^ yester- 
day, and read with unforgettable delight, — 
not that it was new altogether, but somehow 
new then. 

^ The biography of Eufus Choate. 



68 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

May. 

This is something I remember at this mo- 
ment in Voltaire. " He labored at every new 
work as if he had his reputation still to make ! " 
But oh, his letters ! such grace, such " gaiete 
de cceur " ! They are really wonderful, are 
they not? I only wish that there were more 
of them, and when I saw an edition of his 
works for sale in Libbie's catalogue, I was 
tempted to bid. I don't dare propose to Mother 
the bringing in of seventy volumes at one fell 
swoop ! or it might be ninety-seven in the best 
edition. 

Good morning, dear. I begin to set my 
day and to wonder if I can't spend a week 
from this coming Sunday with you. . . . 

I hope you can get off to Manchester by 
the fourth or fifth, as you planned, for I can 
only get a few days there at first, for I find 
that the County Conference, dear to my heart, 
is coming on the eleventh, all the country 
ministers and their wives and delightful dele- 
gates who never appear to go anywhere else — 
nice old country women. 



LETTERS 69 

(to MR. AND MRS. T. B. ALDRICh) 

South Berwick, Maine, 23 July^ 1890. 

My dear Friends, — I began a letter to 
you the very week you went away, but I did 
not finish it, for my mother has been most 
dangerously ill, and only just now begins to 
seem as if she were getting well again. We 
have felt very anxious all these long weeks. 
I really am in a great hurry now to know 
where you are and what you have been doing. 
I was so overwhelmed when I got word of the 
change in the "Atlantic's" fortunes that I 
don't feel free to express myself even yet ! But 
this I can say, that I am most grateful for and 
unforgetful of all the patience and kindness 
which my dear friend the editor has given me 
in these years that are past. One day I saw in 
the "Nation" that "one has learned to look 
for Miss Jewett's best work in the pages of 
the ^Atlantic' "; but I could read something 
deeper still between those lines and gladly 
owned to myself that it was due to many 
suggestions and much helpfulness that my 
sketches have a great deal of their (possible) 
value. I have been taught so many lessons 
and been kept toward a better direction than 



70 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

I could have found for myself. If I were not 
looking eagerly for your new work, dear Mr. 
T. B. A., and were not thankful that your time 
was your own now for your work's sake, I 
should lament more loudly than I do over the 
magazine's loss. 

I wonder if you will go to Paris, and if you 
will see Madame Blanc ? I had a delightful 
letter from her not long ago, written in the 
South of France, and sounding like one of 
George Sand's — say from the second volume 
of her Correspondence! She sent me a volume 
of S. 0. J. all in French, which caused such 
pride of heart that no further remarks are ven- 
tured upon the subject ! 

(to MRS. fields) 

Tuesday morning. 

It seems as if two leaves for one had 
suddenly come out on the trees. Yesterday 
afternoon I went to the funeral of an old 
patient of my father on one of the old farms 
— where the neighbourhood minister preached 
and the old farmhouse was crowded with peo- 
ple — and then we all walked out, two by two, 
across a broad green field, with old-fashioned 
pall-bearers carrying the coffin by hand and 



LETTERS 71 

changing, — first four would take it, and then 
four others who went before, just as it must 
have been in England two hundred years ago. 
There was such a long procession, a hundred 
and thirty or forty, and all in little flocks, — 
the father and mother and their big and little 
children, by twos, following them, and then 
another father and mother and their children. 
Somehow it looked quite scriptural ! and the 
burying-ground was a little square out in the 
middle of this great field, with tall high-standing 
trees shading it. The whole scene was most 
touching and simple and curiously archaic. 
Usually the farming people have the hearse 
come and do all the things that village peo- 
ple do. 

I have been reading a really wonderful little 
book by poor Richard Jefferies. I had never 
even heard of it — " The Story of My Heart," 
he calls it, but it is really the expression of his 
religious growth and aspiration toward higher 
things. He finds little in conventional, or rather 
formulated religions, but everything in an 
eager belief in higher forms of life and un re- 
vealed wisdom. He comes closer to these in 
out-of-door life, as one might expect who 
knows his other books, but his ability to put 



72 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

into words the consciousness of life and indi- 
viduality and relationship to eternity is some- 
thing amazing. I have never known anything 
just like it. I thought of " thy friend " ^ as I 
read it, and of " Phantastes/' which I haven't 
read since I was growing up. There is a queer 
touch of Tolstoi's creeds now and then. This 
copy was printed in '83, — how strange that 
I never knew anything of it ! 

Tonight I saw the dear little new moon 
through the elm boughs ; and have read part of 
one of Hawthorne's American Journal volumes 
but didn't care for it as much as I used to. 
On the contrary, I found the " Rambles about 
Portsmouth" a mine of wealth. One descrip- 
tion of the marketwomen coming down the 
river, — their quaintness and picturesqueness 
at once seem to be so great, and the mere hints 
of description so full of flavor, that it all gave 
me much keener pleasure than anything I 
found in the other much more famous book. 
This seems like high literary treason, but you 
wait and see. This was a volume of Hawthorne's 
younger journals, a conscious effort after mate- 
rial and some lovely enough notes of his walks 
and suggestions for sketches; but these last lack 

1 Whittier. 



LETTERS 73 

any reality or imagination, rootless little things 
that could never open seed in their turn, or 
make much of any soil they were put into, so 
" delicate " in their fancy as to be far-fetched 
and oddly feeble and sophomorish. You will 
find it hard to believe this without the pages 
before you as I have just had them. But oh ! 
such material as I lit upon in the other book ! 
one page flashes into my mind now as 'live as 
Kipling and as full of fresh air, and all the 
touches of brave fancy and quiet pathos. Let an 
old fellow like Brewster keep at it as he did, 
and he quietly brings you a ruby and a diamond, 
picked right up in a Portsmouth street. Such 
genuine books always live, they get filled so full 
of life : it 's neither Boswell nor Johnson who 
can take the credit, but the Life on the pages. 
" Too useful to be lonely and too busy to be sad." 

That is the most lovely thing that Miss 
Phelps ever said or wrote. 

Thursday morning. 

I shall have to write you the same sort of 
letter as Selborne's White wrote to the Hon. 
Daines Barrington, for there does n't seem to 
be anything to tell, except how things grow 
and what birds have come and how things 



74 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

donH grow and what the birds do. There is 
one adorable golden robin in one of the gar- 
den elms, who shouts " Pitty, pitty, ^i^^?/ / " 
all day long like a delighted child, — you will 
be so pleased to make that cheerful bird's ac- 
quaintance when you come. (I don't feel very 
certain about the time when I shall go to you. 
It depends upon how much I can do today 
and tomorrow, and it also depends upon how 
things are here, and what news I get from 
Judge Chamberlain, to whom I have been 
writing about a desk at the Public Library. 
But if I don't go Saturday, I certainly must 
be no later than Monday, for I must get a 
good deal done next week. I am trying to get 
to a certain point in the story here, and then 
be free to forget that part and to do the chap- 
ters about the cathedral, etc., while I am away.) 
I can't say enough about the Ruskin bio- 
graphy. I can hardly wait to have you know 
it, too. He is after our own heart in his affec- 
tion for Dr. Johnson. Next week, if we have 
some time for reading, do let us take some of 
Mr. Arnold's papers that we have been putting 
off, and some of the poems. It seems like cram- 
ming, but I was so sorry I was not more familiar 
with certain parts of his work when I saw him 



LETTERS 75 

before. But some things of his we know as 
well as we know anything — thank goodness! 

Yesterday I was busy both morning and 
afternoon, and got on much better than the 
day before, and I hope it will be the same to- 
day. I was reading " Two Years Before the 
Mast" in the evening, with new admiration 
for its gifts. It seems to me as much a classic 
as anything we have to give, — it has excep- 
tional charm in the way it is done, with per- 
fectly genuine qualities. There is so little that 
is usually thought interesting to tell, and yet 
I could hardly skip a page. 

What did you think of G. Sand's letter to 
Madame d' Agoult, — that long letter at the 
beginning of the book? I couldn't bear to 
have you read it without standing by and see- 
ing how you liked it. Nothing ever made me 
feel that I really know Madame Sand as that 
letter did. 

Monday evening. 

Such a heavenly day. I do wish that you 
could have played out of doors in the sun as 
I did. After dinner I stole away to my fence- 
corner and spent a beautiful season of peace 
and quietness. Jock followed me, but the dis- 



76 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

tant sound of a gun scared him, and so he 
crept close to my petticoats. I had my little 
old " Milton's Shorter Poems " in my pocket 
and read "Lycidas" with more delight than 
ever before ; and then I did nothing for awhile, 
and finally took to aimless scribbling, and I 
don't wonder that you so dearly like to do your 
work out of doors. You never would believe 
how beautiful the country looked; and yet 
after a while I had a consciousness that some- 
thing strange was going on, and looked up 
to see a great white and grey trail of fog, like 
a huge reptile all along the course of the river 
past the town, and so I knew that there was 
a noble sea-turn on its way inland, and scram- 
bled to the top of the hill to find all the east- 
ern country a great grey lake, Agamenticus, 
hidden (for once, you will say), and in fact 
the edge of the low cold cloud was uncomfort- 
ably near, so Jock and I raced it home and 
beat, for it was only a minute or two before 
the village was all a mist. 

Madame Blanc's picture came tonight, and 
I forgot to tell you that a little note from her, 
heralding it, came yesterday. She must have 
given it to some friend to bring across. The 
engraving is signed by Amaury Duval and is 



LETTERS 77 

very sweet to look at. When it was taken, 
twenty years ago, she says it took the medal at 
the Salon. I think it is a little large to bring 
to you, but perhaps not. 

Sunday evening. 

I have got a little cold, so I stayed in most 
willingly today, and have finished the Coleor- 
ton letters. I long to have you begin them, or 
to begin them over again with you. I suppose 
that some or many of them must be printed else- 
where, I am too ignorant to say ; but Words- 
worth's and Dorothy's letters are more delight- 
ful and wise and like their best selves than any 
words of mine can say. Coleridge's, too, follow 
his varying fortunes and ailments over hill and 
dale. In Wordsworth's there is a delectable 
account of his planning and overseeing a 
^^ winter garden" for the Beaumonts, which I 
hope we shall go to see, some day, and there 
are particulars now and then about how the 
evergreens grow, and he writes inscriptions for 
it, and it is a great play ! But Dorothy ! how 
charming she grows as one grows older and 
learns to know her better. How much that we 
call Wordsworth himself was Dorothy to begin 
with. Wordsworth's letters so often make me 



78 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

think of Mr. Arnold. He would love the book 
— but I am in such a hurry to get you at it. 

"Existence is the most frivolous thing in the 
world if one does not conceive it as a great 
and continual duty." I am so glad you told 
me to read this, for I might never have gone 
back to it of my own accord. 

I have such a charming new book, the " Life 
of William Barnes " the Dorset poet, by his 
daughter. There is almost too much of his 
own poetry sandwiched in, which delays the 
run of the biography (to me) — not but what I 
love some of the poems very much. He is like 
the parish priest in the "Deserted Village," — 
[with the wonder] " that one small head could 
carry all he knew " ! I think it would be a lovely 
thing to make a paper for the "Atlantic" or 
some of the magazines. If I had been to his 
village, how I should love to do it, and there is 
my priest of Morwenstow waiting yet ! Perhaps 
they will be nice things to do this winter ? 

(to t. b. aldrich) 

South Berwick, Maine. 
You and I are such timid young authors 
that I can now afford distinct reassurance, 
and say with deep pleasure how much I like 



LETTERS 79 

your two new stories ! You spoke slightingly 
of " Shaw's Folly/' but that was the folly of 
T. B. It is done with such freedom of hand 
and brightness of touch that I liked it most 
uncommonly well, and the only shadow of dis- 
satisfaction that a fond reader can find, is that 
the writer did n't say what the cure might 
have been for such a sad failure ! I suppose 
it is the old story, that we can't trust senti- 
mentality to build houses, or rather to keep 
them running on business principles. The dis- 
tinction between sentiment and sentimentality 
is a question of character, and is as deep as 
one can go in life, and kindness must have a 
sound tap-root. We are trying to speak of 
model lodgings, rather than of literature that 
depicted Mr. Shaw ! We must go right to 
A. F. to get straightened out ! But I love the 
way that you have written that story. There 's 
realism seen from the humorous point of view : 
the trouble with most realism is that it is n't 
seen from any point of view at all, and so its 
shadows fall in every direction and it fails of 
being art. ^^AU of which is respectfully sub- 
mitted," as they say in state papers. 

The brilliant tale touches one's imagination 
in the quickest way. I find that it keeps com- 



80 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

ing to my mind as the " Two Boys in Black" 
has kept coming these many long years. It 
puzzles one as if it were one's own experience, 
and that touch about the handkerchief on the 
face, keeps insisting that the lady — what did 
she do if she did n't die ? But this is getting 
to be a painful one-sided talk instead of a let- 
ter, and I must end it. I wonder if you are all 
as happy as you were the other morning ? I 
feel as if I had looked in at the window and 
seen you all by accident, and as if I must n't 
even think about it myself ! There is only one 
word more : please keep on writing ! 

(to MRS. fields) 

Saturday morning, 12 October, 1890. 

I was busy writing most of the day yes- 
terday, but went up the street for an hour to 
the funeral of a little grand-child of one of 
our neighbours. The mother had died of con- 
sumption not long ago, and this delicate little 
thing was brought to the old grandmother to 
take care of. So it was a blessed flitting, and 
a solemn little pageant of all the middle-aged 
and elderly neighbours going to the funeral 
and sitting in the room where the small coffin 
was, and that old, wise, little dead face, which 



LETTERS 81 

made one feel one's self the ignorant child, and 
that poor baby an ancient wise creature that 
knew all that there was for a baby to know, 
of this world and the next. 

There is a quaint archaic touch in Louise 
Guiney's poem to Izaak Walton, and I do so 
like Craddock,^ who takes time, and is lost to 
sight, to memory dear, and writes a good big 
Harper's story. So does Sister,^ with one for 
the "Atlantic " called Felicia ; so does not 
S. 0. J., whose French ancestry comes to the 
fore, and makes her nibble all round her 
stories like a mouse. They used to be as long 
as yardsticks, they are now as long as spools, 
and they will soon be the size of old-fashioned 
peppermints, and have neither beginning or 
end, but shape and flavor may still be left 
them, and a kind public may still accept when 
there is nothing else. One began to write it- 
self this morning called " The Failure of Mr. 
David Berry"; I have written a quarter, and 
it goes very well indeed, and seems to have its 
cheerful points. 

I read "Madame Bovary" all last evening, 

^ Charles Egbert Craddock is the nom de plume of Miss 
Mary N. Murfree. 

* Miss Murfree's sister. 



82 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

though I only took it up for a few moments 
and meant to do some writing afterward. It 
is quite wonderful how great a book Flaubert 
makes of it. People talk about dwelling upon 
trivialities and commonplaces in life, but a mas- 
ter writer gives everything weight, and makes 
you feel the distinction and importance of it, 
and count it upon the right or the wrong side 
of a life's account. That is one reason why 
writing about simple country people takes my 
time and thought. But I should make too long 
a letter for this short morning. Flaubert, who 
sees so far into the shadows of life, may 
" dwell " and analyze and reflect as much as 
he pleases with the trivial things of life ; the 
woes of Hamlet absorb our thoughts no more 
than the silly wavering gait of this Madame 
Bovary, who is uninteresting, ill-bred, and 
without the attraction of rural surroundings. 
But the very great pathos of the book to me, 
is not the sin of her, but the thought, all the 
time, if she could have had a little brightness 
and prettiness of taste in the dull doctor, if 
she could have taken what there was in that 
dull little village ! She is such a lesson to 
dwellers in country towns, who drift out of re- 
lation to their surroundings, not only social. 



LETTERS 83 

but the very companionships of nature, un- 
known to them. 

Was there ever anything so delicious as 
Carlyle's calling Margaret Fuller "that strange 
lilting, lean old maid ! " I think " lilting " is 
too funny, and how many times do you sup- 
pose he " laffed " after he wrote her down ? 
I never loved the Carlyles before as I do in 
this book. Don't you wonder at him more 
and more ? Froude is always the lover of his 
heroes, but I can't help thinking he is only 
just to Carlyle. I wish we may have a chance 
to go to the Athenaeum next month, and see 
some of the English reviews of the book. I 
want to read about it. The Carlyle makes 
other books seem trivial, as books, just now. 
That cross Scotchman seemed to carry an 
exact, inexorable yardstick, and to measure 
with it as if he were a commissioner from the 
Book of Judgment, though everybody else 
ran about with too short yardsticks and too 
long ones. 

I think better of the Lord Houghton book, 
as I see it more, just as you did. What an 
exquisite letter that is of Tennyson's, when 
R. M. M. was cross at him, and what a dear 
kind old pat on the shoulder our reverend 



84 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Sydney Smith gave him, when R. M. M. thought 
he had been called names of the " cool of 
the evening/' etc., etc. And I do so like Car- 
lyle's first long letter, from Fryston to his 
wife. 

Saturday afternoon, 17 January, 1891. 

This is a short word for you to read on 
Monday morning, written at the close of a 
dark and stormy afternoon. I have been sit- 
ting in mother's room, reading your big Rum- 
ford book, which I somehow have taken into 
my head again. He was such a charioteer ! 
What do you think that he did once but have 
every beggar in Munich arrested ! and then 
sorted them out after careful examination, giv- 
ing work to those who needed it, and helping 
all deserving, and dealing with the naughty 
ones. There was a huge work-house, for in- 
stance, where they were put at trades. You 
would be much pleased with the accounts, and 
some time we must talk about it. I have felt a 
little tired and clumsy-handed, and the Rum- 
ford book was just the thing. The count was 
really such an interesting man. Oh, if this 
young republic could have had his practical 
wisdom ] 



LETTERS 85 

Wednesday night, August 12, 1891. 

What sad news from Elmwood, dear ! It 
makes me so heavy-hearted to think of our 
loss of such a dear friend, and of poor Mabel's 
sorrow. What must not this lovely hot, bright 
day have been to her ! I don't know of any 
one who could feel such sorrow more keenly. 
I think and think of her, and so must you, I 
am sure, and how we should talk about dear 
Mr. Lowell if we were together. Here he is 
only the " Lowell " of his books, to people, 
and not a single one knows how dear and 
charming he was, and how full of help to one's 
thoughts and purposes in every-day life. I 
wrote to Mabel most truly that I was as fond of 
him, almost, as if I belonged to his household 
and kindred. And I suppose that the last bit 
of writing for print that he may have done 
was that letter for me. I have been looking 
over two or three of his letters or notes to me, 
which I happen to have here, with such affec- 
tion and pleasure. How you. will like to look 
over your great package ! And how I treasure 
that last time I saw him, and the fringe tree 
in bloom, and Mabel gone to Petersham, and 
he and I talking on and on, and I thinking he 
was really going to be better, in spite of the 



86 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

look about his face ! I suppose you will go up 
to the funeral ; you must remember what peo- 
ple say, and every little thing that we should 
care about together, to tell me. And yet I say 
to myself, again and again, how glad I am that 
the long illness is ended. 

Saturday morning, South Berwick. 

And more sad news. Dear old Dr. Pea- 
body gone, too ! but let us be thankful that 
he could enjoy life so long and so late. 
Everybody remembers him here with such 
love and gratitude, for the charming address 
that he made two years ago. How many of 
the little New England towns have such a 
pleasant memory ! 

Don't you remember that somebody, while 
we were away, — oh, it was Mr. Alden, — told 
us how exquisite William Watson's " A Prince's 
Quest" was? Last night, after I came from 
my tea-party, I read most of it with great de- 
light. I wish that we could read many of the 
poems together, but I still cling to my first 
love, the Dedication to James Bromley. This 
is Saturday again, and I suppose you will have 
your dozen of pleasant people come in. I love 
the Saturday companies dearly. 



LETTERS 87 

(to t. b. aldrioh) 

Hotel Brunswick, New York. 

My dear Friend, — I am writing this let- 
ter to thank you for your beautiful poem in 
memory of Mr. Lowell, — but how can I find 
words to say what I wish to say about it ! To 
me it speaks of him as his own presence used 
to speak, and brings him back again as if he 
came back with the old life and the new life 
mingled, as indeed they are, and then I feel 
the loss afresh, and somehow wake from the 
reading of the poem to know how great and 
how lovely a poem it is, and to be prouder of 
you than ever, and of your always reverent 
and happy use of your beautiful gift. I wish 
that I could indeed tell you how much I 
thank you, and how straight this last poem 
has gone to A. F.'s heart and mine. 

A. F. is reading ^^ My Cousin the Colonel," 
and bursting into laughter now and then as 
one seldom hears her. I always say that she 
is a poor supporter of story-writers, but it is 
not true now that she can get hold of some- 
thing of yours again. 

We have had a delightful week, and it has 
been good for both of us. Day before yester- 



88 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

day we had a great pleasure in Mr. Booth's 
sending for us to come and have tea with him, 
and then showing us all the Players' Club ! 
But every-day things have reminded me of 
you and Lilian. We are to go home on Tues- 
day. Forgive this bad pen that writes so blun- 
deringly what was in my heart to say, but I 
cannot tell you with any pen how much I care 
about " Elmwood." 



(to MR. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY) 

South Berwick, Maine, 1 November^ 1891. 

My DEAR Mr. Woodberry, — I wish to 
thank you most heartily for your essay upon 
Mr. Lowell in the " Century." I do not know 
when I have read anything with such delight 
and admiration. I only wish that it had been 
printed in spring instead of autumn, — but if 
it comes too late for his own eyes to see, at 
least the eyes of other Americans will read it 
clearer now. 

I hope that I shall see you some day. I 
have always wished to thank you for the plea- 
sure I have had in your use of your beautiful 
gifts in poetry and prose, but this essay leaves 
me more grateful than ever. 



LETTERS 89 

(to MRS. T. B. ALDRICH) 

South Berwick, Maine, November. 

My dear Lilian, — When I went to Town 
for Sunday, I thought that I surely should 
find you in Mount Vernon Street, and I was 
so much disappointed when I heard from A. F. 
that you were still out of town, and espe- 
cially that you are not quite well yet. I have 
been expecting to go to Boston and to see 
you there, so that I have never written you 
a word ! I was so grieved to hear of your ill- 
ness, and I wish very much to see you. If I 
possibly could have stayed I should have gone 
to Ponkapog to spend an hour at least, — dear 
Ponkapog ! how I should like to have a drive 
with you again ! 

I have been busy, as everybody is when she 
first gets home after seven months and more 
away, — answering foolish strangers' letters, 
and so never having a minute in which to write to 
wise friends, and trying to get a little writing 
done, and trying to see all my neighbours, and to 
remember which bureau drawer anything is in ! 
It was so sweet to get home again and into 
the old places — I never shall forget the beauty 
of that first evening on Charles Street as we 



90 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

sat looking out over the river, and being so 
glad to be off the steamer; and next day, 
when I came here to the dear old house and 
home, it all seemed to put its arms round me. 
I am always looking forward to having you 
and T. B. A. here. I wish it were not so late 
in the autumn. 

(to MRS. fields) 

Saturday afternoon, 1892. 

I long to have you get to the chapter 
in Dr. James's book that I have been reading 
to-day : '' The Value of Saintliness." I " find" 
it most particularly fine, and penetrating. 
There is a good page or two about St. Teresa 
in the chapter before which would do your 
heart good to quote, — I mean now the first 
paragraph as far as " It is a fine summing- 
up." 

The other day quite out of clear sky a man 
came to Mary with a plan for a syndicate to 
cut up and sell the river bank all in lots, — 

and oh if Mrs. only does want to buy it, 

or her friend, it will be so nice and make such 
a difference to me. Sometimes I get such a 
hunted feeling like the last wild thing that is 
left in the fields. 



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LETTERS 91 

(to MES. GEORGE D. HOWe) 

Chailly, 9 July, 1892. 

Dearest Alice, — Now they live in Bar- 
bizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontaine- 
bleau, under the very eaves I ought to say, 
and they are having a beautiful good time, 
and in the day-time they play in the woods, and 
after dinner they walk out on the great plain 
and hear (and almost see !) the Angelus. I wish 
I had time to write a long letter all about 
Paris and Madame Blanc who brought us here. 
I can tell you that I went up her stairs with 
my heart much a-f eared, — it is an awful ex- 
periment to see so old a friend for the first 
time, — but I found her even more dear and 
kind and delightful than she has been in her 
letters for those eight long years. There has 
been no end to her friendliness, and what I have 
liked very much, she has taken us to see some of 
her friends, one ideal French lady, a comtesse 
of the old school, in the Place Vendome, 
whose self and house together were like a 
story-book. You would simply love the drives 
here, but I dare say you know them much 
better than I. Last night we strayed far out 
on the great plain, and when we were coming 



92 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

back I heard a man with his heavy scythe cut- 
ting the wheat, and it was so dark I could n't 
see him, and perfectly still, except the noise 
he made, — the sharp swish of the scythe and 
the soft fall of the grain ; one could n't hear 
it so by day. When we hear the Angelus we 
can't help looking all about for two figures 
with bent heads. Millet's own house is close 
by ours. We have some rooms in a pretty old 
place, covered with vines ; you go out through 
a half court-yard and half farm-yard and open 
a big gate to the narrow paved street — and 
a nice piggy lives in a little stone mansion 
close by this gate. I feel very much at home, 
being in truth a country person, but nobody 
could help loving Barbizon. 

little pains / Mes petits breads ! 

1 break with joy your crisp young heads ! 
In you no dreadful soda lurks 

To stab me with a thousand dirks. 
Some baker immigrant should bring 
You to my New World sujffering. 

(to MRS. whitman) 

22, Clarges Street, Mayfair, W. 
London, 20 August^ 1892. 

I believe that I wrote you last from York- 
shire, and there seems to be so much to tell 




SARAH ORNE JEWETT 
From a photograph taken by Frederick Hollyer in 1892 



LETTERS 93 

since, that my pen quite flies in the air, like a 
horse that won't go. We had a lovely scurry 
indeed, home from Ilkley by the way of ^' Lin- 
coln, Peterborough, and Ely," not to speak 
of Boston and Cambridge, where we gave our- 
selves just time enough to see Newnham, and 
to have a walk and to go to the afternoon 
service at King's College Chapel, and to stray 
afterward in the dusk into Trinity Hall to see 
the portraits, and then to our inn to sleep as 
best we might, after a great day, and go on to 
London in the morning. We spent eight solid 
hours in the House of Commons, on Tuesday 
night, to hear the great debate, and were fly- 
ing about a good deal all that week, and at 
the end we went up into Warwickshire to stay 
with Mrs. Dugdale, a most charming visit in 
a story-book country house, which we both en- 
joyed enormously ; and then by Oxford back 
to London again, and this last week we have 
been seeing much of the Arnolds, who have 
come back to town, because 's father-in- 
law, of the house of Kimberly, is in the new 
government, and there was a revival of " so- 
ciety " for a brief space, by which we profited. 
It is a very good time to take for being in 
London, on the whole, but we have been spend- 



94 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

ing nights and making days' journeys to the 
neighborhood, and begin to feel that we are 
not likely to see half enough of London itself. 
But what can I tell you (with a common Fly- 
. ing Scotchman pen) of going to see my Lord 
and Lady Tennyson, down among the Surrey 
hills ! It meant a great deal more to me than 
when I saw them before. I wish I could make 
you know their wonderful faces. One goes 
into their presence with the feeling of a former 
age. I believe that I know exactly what I 
should have felt a thousand years ago if I 
were paying a friendly visit to my king ; but 
it is the high court of poetry at Aid worth, 
whatever one may say. My Lord Tennyson 
was so funny and cross about newspapers and 
reporters that I feel his shadow above me 
even in this letter, innocent-hearted as I be. 
He has suffered deep wrongs indeed ; perhaps 
it is well that I can't write long enough to 
tell you many delightful things that he said 
and did (saying some of his poetry once or 
twice in a wonderful way), except one which 
belongs to you, — his complete delight in my 
Japanese crystal, which he looked at over and 
over, and wondered much about, and enjoyed, 
and thought to find things in it. Was n't 



LETTERS 95 

that nice of you, S. W. ? and you a-giving it 
to me, and indeed so many people beside a 
poet have liked me for it, and remember me 
now as the person to whom it belonged. If I 
could have given it to anybody in this world, 
I could have given it to Tennyson then and 
there ; but No ! and now I like it more be- 
cause he liked it, a-shining in its silver leaves. 
Yesterday we spent the day with Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward, who has been ill for a while and 
is just getting better. Somehow, she seemed 
so much younger and more girlish than I ex- 
pected, even with Ethel, her next sister, clear 
and dear in my mind. Ethel was not there, 
but Mrs. Huxley, and her father and his wife, 
and Mr. Ward himself, for which I was very 
glad. I long to have you know Mrs. Ward. 
You would quite take her to your heart. She 
is very clear and shining in her young mind, 
brilliant and full of charm, and with a lovely 
simplicity and sincerity of manner. I think of 
her with warmest affection and a sacred ex- 
pectation of what she is sure to do if she 
keeps strong, and sorrow does not break her 
eager young heart too soon. Her life burns 
with a very fierce flame, and she has not in 
the least done all that she can do, but just 



96 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

now it seems to me that her vigor is a good 
deal spent. She has most lovely children. The 
young son was busy with a cricket-match, and 
we beheld a good part of it, and saw the 
charming old garden, and altogether it was 
a very pleasant day indeed, and held pleasure 
enough for two or three. Now that I have 
begun to tell things, I wish to write you a 
complete autobiography of two weeks, but all 
the other people and things must wait until I 
see you, except perhaps that I must tell you 
how wonderfully well Mary Beaumont looks 
and seems. This week we are going to Cob- 
ham, to stay a few days with dear Mrs, Arnold, 
who would touch you with her changed looks. 
She has grown so much older since that merry 
day when we went to the first feast at Old 
Place. She asks so affectionately for you, and 
is just as dear as ever. When you get this let- 
ter, I think we shall be staying up at Whitby, 
on our way to Edinburgh, seeing the Du Mau- 
riers again, according to agreement, and other 
friends, and liking to go there because Mr. 
Lowell was always talking about it and was so 
fond of it. Then we go on to Edinburgh. See 
what a little place I have left to send A. F.'s 
love in, but here it goes. Good-bye, dear. 



LETTERS 97 

And then "Lady Rose's Daughter" ! If you 
were here how much we should talk about it. 
There are splendid qualities of the highest sort. 
One says at certain moments with happy cer- 
tainty that here is the one solitary master of fic- 
tion — I mean of novel writing. How is she 
going on at this great pace to the story's end ? 
But one cannot let such a story flag and fail — 
there must be an end as good as this beginning. 



(to MRS. GEORGE D. HOWE) 

Aix-les-Bains, Sunday. 

Dearest Alice, — I have sent many 
thoughts flying your way, if I have n't sent 
any letters in all this time, but the baths are 
a great siege and seem to take all one's time 
and one's wits away together. (And I begin- 
ning this letter on a half -sheet unbeknownst, 
but going straight on, it being among 
friends.) We have hardly begun to take the 
countless drives and excursions about this 
lovely green country, and look upon the 
journey to the Grande Chartreuse as if it 
were beyond Moscow, somewhere on a steppe! 

Did A. tell you what a perfectly beautiful 
time we had when we boldly ran away to 



98 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Chamouny ? — or Chamounix ? — whichever 
way you spell it, because I always forget. 
I never, never shall forget one bit of that 
lovely day when we drove from Martigny 
over the Tete Noire. A.'s dear birthday and 
such weather, and such flowers (it is sainfoin, 
that pink one that I asked you about), whole 
fields of ladies' delights, and large double 
buttercups, and harebells, and forget-me-nots, 
and red things, and pink things, and yellow 
things galore, and Solomon's seal, one sprig in 
a ledge just to show that there was a piece of 
everything, if you only stopped to look : blue 
gentians withal, something like our fringed 
gentians in October. . . . We went on up 
and up that dear, high green valley, passing 
cold little white-silky brooks ; and every now 
and then on the road we came to peasant 
families with their flocks and herds chirping 
and clanking, and all the children capering, 
and the old grand-mother with her stafp, going 
up to the high chalets, to pasture for the 
month of June. We had a lot of candy and 
gave largess and left such a wak^ of smiles 
behind us. I went shopping for it in Mar- 
tigny at break of day. And the grass so 
green and just in flower, and none of it cut, 



LETTERS 99 

and everybody so pleasant along that road, 
and we being so pleasant and gay that we 
kept getting out to have a little walk; the 
air getting into our heads, and the great 
peaks coming around other peaks' corners, to 
look at us solemnly, and all the morning 
clouds blowing away one by one, until the sky 
was all clear blue, and when we got to 
Chamounix, at night-fall, Mont Blanc was shin- 
ing white, and the full moon right above it, 
as if we had come to see at last where the 
moon lived, and started from, to go up into 
the sky. And next morning we had a long 
walk, with the sky still clear, and we were all 
alone in the biggest hotel and felt like prin- 
cesses under the orders of a " retinue." There 
were very few tourists to be seen, but all my 
month in Interlaken (when I came before) 
means less to me, I believe, than that day 
going up from Martigny. And after all this 
we came back as good as pie and went to 
work at our baths again, and never minded 
much about the hot weather or anything. 
I somehow hate not to have you go to Egypt ! 
(You would tell about it so well and ascertain 
the address of a pretty Rag Fair — all to my 
own good and delight!) but do7iH go fum.- 



100 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

bling in dark pyramids or make up a little 
paper bundle of sand of the desert that was 
too interesting to throw away, and always has 
sifted out over everything ! . . . I wish I 
had begun to tell you about Chambery, of 
which we have had one glimpse; tomorrow 
we mean to go there again and to see Les 
Charmettes and the Grande Chartreuse. Good- 
bye, with dear love. 

Venice, Thursday morn, 1892. 

Dear Neighbour and Friend ! — I now 
say that we did go to Torcello, and it was 
so heavenly beautiful that I forbear to speak. 
Oh if you only had been along ! Such sails, 
such towers, such islands; on the far edge of 
the sea such a blossoming bough of whitest 
elder against the blue sky ! And we ourselves, 
going all the way with a sail, and I holding 
the stern-sheets. It was in stripes of red and 
orange, with blue corners to it, faded just 
right, and a kind little breeze served us even 
in the little canal that leads almost to the 
cathedral door. What can we say about it? 
there the stone shutters, the old lonesome, 
mysterious mosaics that stare in each other's 
solemn eyes through the shadows, the damp- 



LETTERS 101 

ness, the greenness, the birds that sing and 
the droning bells. Well, when you wish to 
give me a happy moment of the sweetest re- 
membrance, just say Torcello, and back I 
shall fly to it. There were haycocks on a bit 
of green meadow, and there were children in 
an old boat playing and calling and rustling 
the bushes by the canal, and the old Cam- 
panile looked as if it were made strong to 
hold up the sky. 

I had a good dear letter from home this 
morning; new dog a treasure, but three of 
the horses with coughs — Dick and Betty and 
Susan ! the distemper thought to be of no con- 
sequence by John until Dick caught it ! 

(to MRS. fields) 

Home, South Berwick, October, 1892. 

How much we have felt in these last days 
and how we can see his pathetic figure^ and 
his great dim eyes. I am so rich in the 
thought of that visit, and I can truly say that 
the one thing which made me feel most anx- 
ious to have you get to England this summer 
was to make sure of your seeing him again, 

^ ^ Tennyson. 



102 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and now you have seen him and I too, and it 
was a most lovely visit. The great dignity and 
separateness of his life comes clearer than ever 
to mind. He seemed like a king in captivity, 
one of the kings of old, of divine rights and 
sacred seclusions. None of the great gifts I 
have ever had out of loving and being with 
you seems to me so great as having seen 
Tennyson, and then I stop and think of Mr. 
Lowell and wonder if I ought to have been so 
sure, though that was sl little different. But 
if somebody said come and see Shakespeare 
with me I couldn't have felt any more or 
deeper than I did about Tennyson. 

South Berwick, October 29, 1892. 
Town means that I should begin things 
over again, and here it is very idle, and 
most of the dear village neighbours have 
made their kind visits, and we can be alone 
in the long sunny afternoons. Yesterday, a 
dear little old woman, who rarely leaves her 
house, came in to see Mary and me. ^^ I know 
just how you feel, dear," she said, ^^ I have 
been through the same sorrow " ; and I could 
see that it was present yet in her heart, and 
she almost ninety, and missing her mother still. 



LETTERS 103 

It was a most tender and touching little old 
face, — I wish you had been here to know the 
dignity and sweetness of her visit, dear quaint 
old lady, mindful of the proprieties, and one 
who had seen almost everybody go whom she 
had known in youth, or middle-age, even. I 
wish you knew some of the village people, — 
not the new ones, but those to whom in their 
early days Berwick was the round world itself. 



(to MR. DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH) 

10th Novemher, 1892, South Berwick, Maine. 

My dear Mr. Douglas, — I only wish I were 
near enough to make one of your household 
now and then. I console myself by thinking 
that we do not live either in a letterless world 
or one where the remembrance of the past 
pleasures of friendship need ever be anything 
but present joy. As I sat at your table it was 
something like being at home in the old days 
when I still had my dear father and mother 
with all their wit and wisdom and sweetness. 
Now my elder sister and I are often alone. 

It is funny how everything here seems to 
concern itself with the World's Fair at Chicago ! 
for one of our magazines — Scribner's — means 



104 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

to be first in the field with a Great Kepresen- 
tative Number ! and I am hurrying to finish 
a story for it — a May number, but the edi- 
tors are already anxious about being behind 
hand. 

Mrs. Fields has seen Dr. Holmes and found 
him pretty well, and full of delightful fun ; 
bearing his years cheerfully, and drawing his 
old friends closer, as he lets the rest of the 
world sHp away little by little. Whittier's 
and Tennyson's death touched him closely, 
and it happens that some other old friends 
of his went this autumn too. Mr. Curtis, 
and Mr. Samuel Longfellow, the brother, a 
biographer of the poet, and Dr. Parsons, an 
erratic man of real genius, the translator of 
Dante and a poet of no mean skill, who was 
one of Dr. Holmes's and Mr. Fields's friends 
— all this has been sad for the dear old doc- 
tor, but as I have said, he keeps very cheer- 
ful. 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Douglas ! My best thanks 
for Dean Eamsay's and Felicia Skene's book 
and more for the thought. 

Yours most affectionately. 



LETTERS 105 

(to MRS. GEORGE D. HOWE) 

South Berwick, 12 February, 1893. 

My dear Alice, — It seems a very long time 
since I wrote to you, but these have been the 
chief reasons : two bothering eyes that won't 
always go when I most wish them to, and the 
following achievements of my pen mentioned 
in order and by name ! 

"The Flight of Betsey Lane," 

'^ Between Mass and Vespers," 

" All My Sad Captains," 

" A Day in June," 

" A Second Spring," 
and " A Lonely Worker," 
besides two or three short little things to give 
away, of a dozen pages of writing each — all 
bran-fire new except the "Sad Captains," 
which I had written through before I went 
away, and have now done ever so much more 
work upon! Look at that for a combina- 
tion of Idleness and a New England Con- 
science ! 

But if I have n't written, there have been 
few days when I have n't thought of you 
pretty often. I acknowledge to a pang of wist- 
ful homesickness when you first wrote from 



106 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the Bristol, — you can't think how I love the 
thought of my weeks there in spite of illness 
and sorrow and everything. I wish I could go 
to the Pincio with you, and wait in the sun- 
shine until twelve o'clock, to hear all the bells, 
— to see the great brimming fountains as I 
come away, — to be with you, to lose Beppi^ 
behind the hedge and find him again, about 
twenty feet away, and to see the roofs of 
Kome! How one keeps and loves a morn- 
ing like that last morning ! . . . Do you 
bless yourself a-going into the Sacristy at St. 
Peter's, and ever think of me a-seeing the 
lovely Forlis. That was a great morning, and 
I was just trying to remember how that mosaic 
of lilies went together in the chapel pave- 
ment. Don't you know we thought that S. W. 
could do it in glass and you were going to 
sketch it out for her ? I always wish that you 
had been with us that afternoon, when we 
went to St. Onofrio. It was the dearest, most 
revealing place to me. I suddenly understood, 
as I never had before, just why persons could 
make themselves quiet and solitary nests in 
such places, and never wish to go out into the 
busy world again. I love St. Onofrio better 

1 A little dog. 



LETTERS 107 

than any little church in Rome, and there 's the 
truth. I should have to look off and see hills 
and mountains, whatever my meetin' privileges 
might be ! which comes of being brought up 
a Maine borderer. 

So you have been cold ? It has been freez- 
ing here; the longest stretch of very cold 
weather that I have known for years. I have 
been here most of the time, but going to town 
every two or three weeks, and last time I stayed 
ten days, a great visit if you please. Every- 
body felt Mr. Brooks's death tremendously. I 
have never seen anything like the effect upon 
the city the day of the funeral — the hush, the 
more than Sunday-like stop; the mighty 
mourning crowd about the church, and in the 
church a scene that thrills me now, as I think 
of it. The light kept coming and going, — it 
was a spring-like day, with a sky full of shining 
white clouds, and on all the plain black hang- 
ings S. W. had made them put great laurel 
wreaths, with a magnificent one of red carna- 
tions and green on the front of the pulpit, 
that was like a victor's trophy. When the 
coffin came up the aisle, carried shoulder high 
by those tall young men, the row of grave 
young faces, the white lilies and the purple 



108 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

pall!^ — it was like some old Greek festival 
and the Christian service joined together. 
The great hymn as they went out again — 
" For all thy saints who from their labours 
rest " ; the people beginning it as if with a 
burst of triumph, and the voices stopping and 
stopping, until hardly anybody was left to sing 
at all, and all the people standing and crying 
as if their hearts would break — you can't 
imagine what it was ! But nothing has ever 
been such an inspiration, — it has been like a 
great sunset that suddenly turned itself into 
dawn. 

Yours most lovingly. 

(to MRS. whitman) 

Spring House, 
Richfield Springs, N. Y., 29 August, 1894. 

I must write you out of loneliness and pretty 
deep-down sadness tonight. I had a telegram 
Monday morning that Celia Thaxter had died, 
dear old Sandpiper, as was my foolish and 
fond name, these many years. We were more 
neighbours and compatriots than most people. 
I knew the island, the Portsmouth side of her 
life, better than did others, and those days we 
spent together last month brought me to know 



LETTERS 109 

better than ever a truly generous and noble 
heart. When her old mother lay dying, she 
called her boys, and said, " Be good to sister, 
she has had a very hard time " ; and it was all 
true. She was past it all when I was with her 
in July. Life had come to be quite heavenly 
to her and — oh, how often I think of Sir 
Thomas Browne, his way of saying, " And 
seeing that there is something of us that must 
still live on, let us join both lives together and 
live in one but for the other." I wonder 
if you know those islands? with their grey 
ledges and green bayberry and wild roses, the 
lighthouse that lights them and the main-land 
far enough away to be another country? I 
suppose you do. At any rate, her little book 
about them is another White's Selborne, and 
will live as long. 

What a solitary place a great hotel can be ! I 
felt it (as I have n't before) yesterday, with the 
thought of Appledore in my heart. But there 
are sights of friends to say good-morning to, 
even if there are few to say good-night. 

To tell the truth I have been a nice un- 
friendly kind of hermit these ten days, and 
have read the " Three Guardsmen " like an idle 
school-boy, and the petty routine of baths 



110 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and things can take any amount of time, and 
I am by this time quite unexpectedly limber, a 
right hand for instance working well and proof 
now offered. But you know Charles Lamb 
said that his would go on awhile by itself, as 
chickens walk after their heads are off. 



(to MRS. fields) 
Spring House, Kichfield Springs, N. Y. 

I wish so to see you tonight and long so for 
tomorrow and next day's letters to know about 
dear Sandpiper. It has been a very sad day to 
me as you will know. It seems as if I could 
hear her talking, and as if we lived those June 
days over again. Most of my friends have gone 
out of illness and long weeks of pain, but with 
her the door seems to have open and shut, and 
what is a very strange thing, I can see her 
face, — you know I never could call up faces 
easily, and never before, that I remember, have 
I been able to see how a person looked who has 
died, but again and again I seem to see her. 
That takes me a strange step out of myself. All 
this new idea of Tesla's : must it not, like every- 
thing else, have its spiritual side, and yet where 
imagination stops and consciousness of the 



LETTERS 111 

unseen begins, who can settle that even to one's 
self? 



(to MBS. whitman) 

South Berwick, Maine, Tuesday. 

Deab Fellow Pilgbim, — I now say that 
I never had such a beautiful time as on Tues- 
day of last week, when I came to luncheon 
at your House, and spoke of Mrs. Kemble, and 
of the day of the Shaw Memorial, and of 
other things with Mr. Henry Lee. One trea- 
sures the last of that delightful company and 
generation, as if they were the few last sur- 
vivors of an earlier and most incomparable 
one. I look upon that generation as the one 
to which I really belong, — I who was brought 
up with grand-fathers and grand-uncles and 
aunts for my best playmates. They were not 
the wine that one can get at so much the 
dozen now ! I write in great haste, but speak- 
ing from my heart and quite incompetent to 
use proper figures of speech in regard to this 
large and dear subject. 

We must say things about the "Life of 
Jowett," — a very true and moving book. I 
somehow think of him and those like him 



112 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

as I remember an unforgettable phrase of 
T. Warton's, "The great fact of their love 
moved on with time." 

South Berwick, Madje, Thursday morning. 

Dear Friend, — It is impossible to say 
how your letter has heartened me. I send 
you love and thanks, — it is one more un- 
breakable bond that holds fast between me 
and you. You bring something to the reading 
of a story that the story would go very lame 
without; but it is those unwritable things that 
the story holds in its heart, if it has any, that 
make the true soul of it, and these must be 
understood, and yet how many a story goes 
lame for lack of that understanding. In France 
there is such a code, such recognitions, such 
richness of allusions; but here we confuse our 
scaffoldings with our buildings, and — and so! 

This I feel like talking all day about, if 
you were only here, — but I come down to 
my poor Martha : I thought that most of us 
had begun to grow in just such a way as she 
did, and so could read joyfully between the 
lines of her plain story, but I wonder if most 
people will not call her a dull story. That 
would be all my fault, and sets me the harder 



LETTERS 113 

at work ; the stone ought to be made a lovely- 
statue. Nobody must say that Martha was 
dull, it is only I. 



(to miss a. o. Huntington) 

148 Charles Street, Boston, 15 April, 1895. 

My dear Miss Huntington, — I am very 
sorry that your first letter to me should have 
been lost or overlooked. I thank you for this 
second letter, which gives me much pleasure. 

I am very glad that you like " Deephaven " 
and that your friend likes it too, and I send 
this little page which I have just copied for 
you to give to her, as you say that you should 
like to do. As for the characters. Miss Chaun- 
cey is the only one who was a real person, 
and I made the first visit to her one after- 
noon just as I have described. Very little of 
that chapter is imaginary (or of the chapter 
called "In Shadow"). I do not like the pic- 
ture of her, because I remember her much 
more ghostly and not such a brisk and deter- 
mined person as the artist drew. This Miss 
Chauncey looks much too aggressive, while 
the real one was most appealing and a little 
bewildered as you may imagine. However, I 



114 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

like all the rest of the pictures so very much 
that I ought not to find fault with Miss 
Chauncey ! 

(to MRS. whitman) 

Sunday, September 8, 1895, 
The Anchorage, Martinsville, Maine. 

You would not think from this handsome 
and large paper what a small plain bushy 
corner of the world this letter comes from. 
The golden-rod is all in bloom, and there is 
a lighthouse (Monhegan) off the coast, and 
the Anchorage is a nice story-and-half house 
that stands in a green field that slopes down 
to the sea. I sleep in a little back bedroom 
whose window gives on a lane and a stone 
wall and a potato field, where the figures of 
J. F. Millet work all day against a very un- 
French background of the pointed firs that 
belong to Maine, like the grey ledges they 
are rooted in. I don't think you would like it 
very well unless you fell to painting and then 
— Oh my ! — I don't wish for you as I do in 
most places — perhaps it is because the land- 
scape is usually without figures — in spite of 
the potato field. But oh ! I have found such 
a corner of this world, under a spruce tree, 



LETTERS 115 

where I sit for hours together, and neither 
thought nor good books can keep me from 
watching a little golden bee, that seems to 
live quite alone, and to be laying up honey 
against cold weather. He may have been idle 
and now feels belated, and goes and comes 
from his little hole in the ground close by 
my knee, so that I can put my hand over his 
front door and shut him out, — but I promise 
you and him that I never will. He took me 
for a boulder the first day we met ; but after 
he flew round and round he understood 
things, and knows now that I come and go 
as other boulders do, by glacial action, and 
can do him no harm. A very handsome little 
bee and often to be thought of by me, come 
winter. 

Did you read Bourget's address on his ad- 
mission to the Academief I have had it for 
ever so long, waiting for the right day; there 
was so much of the cramped newspaper type, 
that wind, weather and the planets had to be 
all right. It is wonderfully interesting, quite 
a noble speech, I think, and quite his own 
heart and hope talking out loud, as if there 
were no people there. Thus he says once : 
" Tant il est vrai que le principe de la creation 



116 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

intellectuelle comme de toutes les autres reside 
dans le don magnanime et irraisonne de soi- 
meme, dans Telam attendri vers les autres, 
dans la chaleur de Tenthousiasme, et que le 
genie de Tartiste est comme toutes les grandes 
choses du monde : un acte de foi et d'amour." 
Some day I wish we could talk about this ad- 
dress of Bourget's — there are things about it 
which touch one's heart very much. 



(to MRS. fields) 

Stonehurst, Intervale, N. H., 
Tuesday night [1896]. 

Such a nice day — out all day up in the 
Carter Notch direction, trout-fishing, with the 
long drive there and the long drive home 
again in time for supper. It was a lovely 
brook and I caught seven good trout and one 
small one — which eight trout - persons you 
should have for your breakfast if only you 
were near enough. It was not alone the fish- 
ing, but the delightful loneliness and being 
out of doors. Once I was standing on a log 
that had fallen across the stream, and I looked 
round to see a solemn little squirrel who had 
started to cross his bridge ! and discovered me. 



LETTERS 117 

He looked as if he had never seen such a 
thing before, and he sat up and took a good 
look, that squirrel did, and then discreetly 
went back. You ought to have seen us look- 
ing at each other ; / did n't know there was 
anybody round either ! ! I went off alone down 
the bed of the great brook, and was gone 
three hours, and the boys went off another 
way. It really did me good, and I got wet and 
tired hopping from stone to stone, and liked 
it all as much as ever. 



(to miss rose lamb) 

Monday 11th, 1896, South Berwick, Maine. 

My dear Rose, — I was in town again for 
a few days, last week; I mean week before 

last, and I thought of you and of Mrs. R , 

but I was more taken up with affairs than 
usual so that I could not manage to get to 
see you. Now I am so busy with some writ- 
ing here that I cannot say when I shall get to 

town again. But tell Mrs. R that the 

only way is to keep at work ! If I were she 
I should read half a dozen really good and 
typical stories over and over ! Maupassant's 
" Ficelle " for pathos and tragic directness, for 



118 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

one, and some of Miss Thackeray's fairy sto- 
ries, — " Cinderella/' for instance, which I have 
always admired very much, — old-fashioned 
romance put into modern terms, and Miss 
Wilkins's story about getting the squashes in 
one frosty night, and the cats being lost ! I 
can't remember its name though the story 
is so clear and exquisite to my mind, and 
Daudet's " La Chevre de M. Sequin " and 
" La Mule du Pape." These are all typical 
and well proportioned in themselves and well- 
managed, and I speak of them because they 
come readily to my mind, and give one clear 
ideas of a beautiful way of doing things. One 
must have one's own method : it is the per- 
sonal contribution that makes true value in 
any form of art or work of any sort. 

I could write much about these things, but 
I do not much believe that it is worth while 
to say anything, but keep at work! If some- 
thing comes into a writer's or a painter's 
mind the only thing is to try ity to see what 
one can do with it, and give it a chance to 
show if it has real value. Story-writing is 
always experimental, just as a water -color 
sketch is, and that something which does 
itself is the vitality of it. I think we must 



LETTERS 119 

know what good work is, before we can do 
good work of our own, and so I say, study 
work that the best judges have called good 
and see why it is good ; whether it is, in that 
particular story, the reticence or the bravery 
of speech, the power of suggestion that is in 
it, or the absolute clearness and finality of 
revelation ; whether it sets you thinking, or 
whether it makes you see a landscape with a 
live human figure living its life in the fore- 
ground. 

Forgive this hasty note, which perhaps you 

will read to Mrs. R . I could not say 

more just now if we were talking together. 
Yours affectionately. 

(to miss ELLEN CHASE) 
9 November, 1896, South Berwick, Maine. 

Dear Ellen Chase, — How very good of 
you to send me these nice photographs of 
Whitby ! The face of the old woman is really 
wonderful, with its eyes that have watched 
the sea, — indeed every one is interesting. I 
brought home a good many in 1892, and 
wished for more, — but is it not delightful 
that all these are new and different? I am 



120 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

very grateful to you, dear, for such kind 
thought. I knew Whitby first through Mr. 
Lowell, who used to talk much about his sum- 
mers there : so that after he died, and I went 
there, the place was full of memories of him. 
Do you know (of course, you do) his letters 
about it in the Life that Mr. Norton edited ? 
I am sorry to say that Mrs. Fields overlooked 
one, in sending her letters to Mr. Norton, 
which is more beautiful than any : about grey 
St. Hilda's Abbey and the red roofs of the 
old town. And now as I look back I remem- 
ber also how I went about the streets of 
Whitby with Mr. Du Maurier and his little 
dog, and one day I heard the songs in " Peter 
Ibbetson," with their right tunes sung by 
that charming voice that is silent now. So, 
with all this, you see that pictures of Whitby 
mean a great deal to me. 

I am very glad to have the photograph of 
your own house. It looks as if it were old, and 
not new : it looks as if it were not without 
a past and dear associations, which is much to 
say of a new house. Some day — oh, yes in- 
deed ! — I should like dearly to come and see 
it. 

Yours very affectionately. 



LETTERS 121 

I wonder if you have not been reading 
"Sir George Tressady," — a really great and 
beautiful story as I think. I care very much 
for it. 

(to MRS. fields) 

Monday morning. 

Yesterday I did n't go out, but finished the 
first volume of Edward Irving and then read 
Carlyle's truly wonderful paper about him, in 
which, by the way, he says that Mrs. Oliphant's 
account of Irving's last days is quite wonderful. 
He is really eloquent in writing about it, but 
finds the early part of the biography a little un- 
true to the character of Irving as he knew him, 
romantic and idealizing to some extent. You 
feel that what he says of their various inter- 
views and associations is exactly as he knows 
it, and always most sympathetic and affecting, 
as you will remember ; but to Mrs. Oliphant, 
Irving stands almost against the dark back- 
ground of his fate. Irving seems less great 
than I expected, but very moving, a creature 
of brilliant natural gifts, especially of speech. 
He would have made a certain kind of great 
politician, perhaps after Gladstone's kind, but 
I understood part of the reason of his decline 



122 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

when Carlyle says that he was not a reader. 
Men of his impulsive nature ride off on strange 
ideas when they fail in what Matthew Arnold 
tried to teach in " Literature and Dogma." 
After all, Irving failed through the mistakes 
of ignorance, and a self-confidence which 
always goes with that kind of ignorance. 
How we shall talk about this most moving 
book. 

Carlyle took no stock in Irving's wife, and 
he is so solemn and regretful about the Gift of 
Tongues and the squeals of a lady parishioner 
one day when he was calling. The squint of 
Irving's eye was a sign of something in his 
brain. 



(to miss SARA Norton) 

South Berwick, Maine, 23 February. 
How delightful it was to see you ! I cannot 
help thinking that yesterday morning is a very 
dear hour to put away and remember. I got 
home at half-past three in the afternoon, to a 
world of snow, which surprised me very much, 
with the rain raining on it as hard as it can and 
a general outlook toward a tremendous month 
of March. Tomorrow we are looking for some 



LETTERS 123 

friends who mean to come down from town to 
look at the old house I have often told you 
about, and of which they had heard. I can't 
imagine a drearier moment, but there are the 
big elms high and dry, and some other attrac- 
tions, and they must take their chances and 
make their choices. Berwick always seems a 
little sad, even to me ! in the wane of winter. 
The old houses look at each other as if they 
said, " Good heavens ! the things that we re- 
member ! " But after the leaves come out they 
look quite prepared for the best and quite 
touchingly cheerful. 

August 5, 1897. 
Just at this moment, instead of going on 
with my proper work of writing, I find that I 
wish to talk to you. This is partly because I 
dreamed about you and feel quite as if I had 
seen you in the night. I am at Mrs. Cabot's, 
— my old friend's, — and somehow it is a very 
dear week. She has been ill ever since I came 
on Saturday, but not so ill as to give her much 
pain or me any real anxiety. I sit in her room 
and talk and read and watch the sails go in 
and out of harbor, and she speaks wisely from 
her comfortable great bed while we have a 



124 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

comfortable sense of pleasure in being to- 
gether. I am very fond of this dear old friend, 
and I always love to be with her. Besides, it 
is a house unlike any other, with a sense of 
space and time and uninterruptedness, which 
as you know is n't so easy to find in this part 
of the world. One hates to waste a moment in 
trivial occupations — you might write an epic 
poem at Mrs. Cabot's — that is, if you might 
write it anywhere ! 

I think of the old house at home as I write 
this so gayly, and to tell the truth, I wish that 
you and I were there together. If we were 
there we should see the pink hollyhocks in the 
garden and read together a good deal. I wish 
that my pretty dream were all true ! but one 
finds true companionship in dreams — as I 
knew last night. 

Dear child, I shall be so glad to see you 
again. I have missed you sadly this sum- 
mer in spite of your letters, — in spite of time 
and space counting for so little in friend- 
ship! 

South Berwick, 3 September. 
It is so nice to direct your envelope to Ash- 
field, that I must speak of it to begin with ! 



LETTERS 125 

Your last letter from London came yesterday 
and made me sorrier than ever, because I 
could not carry out my best of plans of going 
to town : I do so wish to see you ! I wish that 
Berwick were on the way to Ashfield; but 
then one might as well wish for things that 
can come true. 

This is my birthday and I am always nine 
years old — not like George Sand, who be- 
gins a letter — no, no ! I mean Madame de Se- 
vigne!! — ^'5 fevrier 16 — ; il y a aujourd' 
hui mille ans que je suis nee ! " If you were 
here I should just stop a long bit of copying 
and take a short bit of luncheon in a little 
plain basket, and you and I would go off at 
once up "the little river" to keep this birthday 
with suitable exercises. I have quite forsaken 
the tide river for its smaller sister this year, 
the banks are so green and all the trees lean 
over it heavy with leaves. You have come 
home at the end of the most beautiful summer 
that I have ever seen ; it is still like June here 
and impossible to believe that we are only two 
or three weeks from frost. I shall love to think 
of you in Ashfield. 

And the partings, dear Sally ! oh, yes, I feel 
deep in my heart all that you say in your letter. 



126 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

One feels how easy it is for friends to slip 
away out of this world and leave us lonely. 
And such good days as you have had are too 
good to be looked for often. There is some- 
thing transfiguring in the best of friendship. ) 
One remembers the story of the transfigura- 
tion in the New Testament, and sees over 
and over in life what the great shining hours 
can do, and how one goes down from the 
mountain where they are, into the fret of every- 
day life again, but strong in remembrance. 
I once heard Mr. Brooks preach a great ser- 
mon about this: That nobody could stay on 
the mount, but every one knew it, and went 
his way with courage by reason of such mo- 
ments. You cannot think what a sermon it 
was! 

I have just been reading the life of the 
Master of Balliol, and finding great pleasure 
within. You knew, did n't you ? how fond he 
and Mrs. Dugdale were of each other, and that 
he was the kindest of friends to her sons. 
There is little of this in the two big volumes, 
I suppose because she is not given to letter- 
writing, which the Master certainly was, — 
some of his letters belong almost to the level 
of our E. F. G., — or I must say quite, when 



LETTERS 127 

I remember some to Dean Stanley and to the 
Tennysons. But this is too long a letter for 
the busiest of hard-working mornings. 



(to miss ELLEN CHASe) 

South Berwick, September 27, 1897. 

Dear Ellen, — Thank you again, and then 
once more for my little lemon-tree, which is 
keeping me company again on the sunny win- 
dow-seat here, close by my secretary where I 
write. It has had a happy summer in the shade 
of the lilacs (and yet not out of the sun all 
day), and at this moment it has not many 
leaves, but no end of little lemons ! ! ! One of 
them is as large as the end of my thumb, — so 
we must not believe that so noble a lemon-tree 
condescends to the Berwick climate. It always 
gives me great pleasure, and I love to remem- 
ber whence it came, with the delightful old 
associations that every lemon-tree must always 
have, and the pleasant new ones that you gave 
this special one. 



128 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to MRS. fields) 

South Berwick, Wednesday afternoon. 
[^After a visit at Mr. Whittier^s house at Ameshury.'] 

I longed to send you a note this morning, 
but unluckily I did n't have any paper upstairs, 
and had to leave soon after breakfast, or be- 
fore half -past eight, so I did n't like to ask for 
writing materials! I was so glad that I went. 
" Thy dear friend" was so glad to see me, and 
we sat right down and went at it, and with 
pauses at tea-time, the conversation was kept 
up until after ten. He was even more affec- 
tionate and dear than usual, and seemed un- 
commonly well, though he had had neuralgia 
all day and made out to be a little drooping 
with the assistance of the weather and coming 
company. But oh, how rich we are with " thy 
friend" for a friend! He looked really stout 
for him, and his face was so full of youth 
and pleasure and eagerness of interest, as we 
talked, that it was good only to see him. The 
LL. D. had evidently given pleasure, though 
he was quite shy about it. He was full of 
politics, but we also touched upon Wallace 
and my old grand-uncle, whom he used to 
know in Bradford, grand-father's brother ; and 



LETTERS 129 

we talked about Burns and "thy friend's" 
"Aunt Jones/' who believed in witches, and 
he told a string of his delicious old country 
stories, and we went over Julian Hawthorne 
and Lowell, and the President and Mrs. Cleve- 
land, and I told him how Lowell's oration made 
me feel, and I don't know what, or who else, 
except you and your dearest one, for he talked 
about you both in a heavenly way — of your 
friendship and how much he owed to you. 

(to MRS. whitman) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
Friday night. 

Dearest S. W., — I came home to a day 
or two of illness, the last fling of an officious 
hanging-on old cold, and here I am writing to 
you, a little more good-for-nothing than com- 
mon, but mending, and with the tag end of 
Hope to hold on by. Even for me things go 
crosswise, which one cannot bear to say, and 
I won't say, after all, but send you love and 
beg to hold on fast to the only certainty in 
this world, which is the certainty of Love and 
Care. I can't help feeling that Mary Darmes- 
teter speaks true, out of great pain and the 
deep places of life, when she ends that last 



130 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

book, " The true importance of life is not 
misery or despair, however crushing, but the 
one good moment which outweighs it all." I 
cannot say how often I have remembered this 
in the last month. The only thing that really 
helps any of us is love and doing things for 
love's sake. I wanted to send you some sprigs 
of box, but a flurry of snow fastened down its 
covering of boughs, — it 's winter now, you 
know ; but I '11 just tell you one thing, it 's go- 
ing to be spring and there 's not a great while 
to wait, either. Don't you forget it was I who 
told you this, and said good-night, as if we 
were together, with a kiss and a blessing. 

Whenever you want the Darmesteter book, 
" Renan," send down to 148 for it. I meant 
to carry it to you. I am just reading Mrs. 
Oliphant's " Life of Edward Irving " with great 
delight. There is a wonderful piece of land- 
scape in the beginning (like one of your own 
pictures), where the boy goes over the moors in 
the early morning to his Covenanting Church. 

South Berwick, Maine, 
Friday night, late. 

My very dear Friend, — I have dared 
to look into the Tennyson Life, late as it is, 



LETTERS 131 

and I believe that I have read the greater 
part of it, making believe that I was only 
cutting the leaves. "The longer I live," he 
says once, "the more I value kindness and 
simplicity among the sons and daughters of 
men." 

I think the book makes him live again ; it 
was a wonderful face, and he was far and away 
the greatest man I have ever seen. There was 
a kindness and simplicity — oh, most beauti- 
ful ! but a separateness as if he had come from 
another world. 

But how the days fly by, as if one were 
riding the horse of Fate and could only look 
this way and that, as one rides and flies across 
the world. Oh, if we did not look hack and 
try to change the lost days ! if we can only 
keep our faces toward the light and remember 
that whatever happens or has happened, we 
must hold fast to hope ! I never forget the 
great window. I long for you to feel a new 
strength and peace every day as you work at 
it, — a new love and longing. The light from 
heaven must already shine through it into 
your heart. 



132 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 

South Berwick, Maine, 28 October, 1897. 

All these days I have thought of you often. 
It has been a hurried, unexpected sort of time 
with me, and a general sense of nothing hap- 
pening quite as it ought to happen, as if the 
North Star had got just a little bit out of 
its place toward the northwest. My eye just 
caught sight of your little photograph of the 
Levens Bridge, perched on some papers at 
the back of my desk, and it gave a pleasing 
reassurance of the stability of England, even 
if the State of Maine has got joggled. 

I have had to go to Exeter several times 
lately, where I always find my childhood 
going on as if I had never grown up at all, 
with my grand -aunts and their old houses 
and their elm-trees and their unbroken china 
plates and big jars by the fireplaces. And I 
go by the house where I went to school, aged 
eight, in a summer that I spent with my 
grand-mother, and feel as if I could go and 
play in the sandy garden with little dry bits of 
elm-twigs stuck in painstaking rows. There are 
electric cars in Exeter now, but they can't 
make the least difference to me ! 



LETTERS 133 

In talking lately with S. W. E. (she has 
great charm for me as I think you know) it 
seemed while she was speaking that her love 
for your mother had been growing all these 
years instead of fading out as so many old 
friendships do when one has gone away. As 
I write this I remember a verse which always 
touches me profoundly, — 

" Come mete me out my loneliness, O wind, 
For I would know 
How far the living who must stay behind 
Are from the dead who go." 

I am stepping upon very sacred ground when 
I write about this, dear child, but it has quite 
haunted me, that bit of talk with S. W. E. 
She was thinking aloud, I believe, rather than 
talking to me, and yet she told me a little 
story about you in your childhood which 
made me know you as I never have known 
you before, in such a near sweet way. As I 
grow older it has been one of the best things 
in life to take up some of the old friendships 
that my mother had to let fall, there is a 
double sweetness in doing this, one feels so 
much of the pleasure of those who seem to 
see something of their lost companionship re- 
turn. 



134 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Thursday uight, 1897. 

Today we went out to the desired Canter- 
bury to the great Shaker convent, which I have 
long wished to visit : it is more like a monas- 
tery than Alfred, and in some ways more in- 
teresting. I found friends of our old acquaint- 
ances there and heard the Alfred news. This 
great group of old houses is on a high hill, 
quite Italian in its site, and the views of the 
great lower country and the mountains beyond 
are wonderful. The color was most splendid 
today, and the lights and shadows chasing 
each other from yellow maple to brown oak. 
It would be a perfect place to send children 
now and then, as we used to think at Alfred. 
I shall love to tell you about it. I was deeply 
touched at heart to find the old sisters knew 
my stories ever so long ago, and were getting 
up a little excitement about my being there. 
The girls and my cousins had a great day, but 
such days are almost too much pleasure for 
my heart to bear, — the pathos, the joy of 
those faces, the innocent gayety of their dull 
lives. 



LETTERS 135 

(to miss rose lamb) 

148 Charles Street, February 5. 

My dear Rose, — How delightful above 
everything this last letter of yours is from 
Luxor ! I am sure that the winter is doing you 
a great deal of good, but we miss you, and it 
makes me a little homesick when I catch a 
glimpse of your house with the blinds shut as 
I come and go along Charles Street. I love to 
think that you are away, and especially that 
you are going to be in Athens by and by. Do 
not forget to look at my dear lady in the most 
beautiful of all the "grave reliefs" — no. 832 : 
she is really the most beautiful thing in the 
world, and always a real person to me, so that 
the thought of her almost gives my heart 
a little thiiW — 832^ don't forget her ! This 
last fortnight Mary and I have both been 
here, and we have been going out so much 
that yesterday I protested against behaving 
like a hud any longer and told my sister that 
she must go home and let us settle down ! I 
have really enjoyed going about and seeing 
people so much, — it is the first year in ever 
and ever so many that I have not had a heavy 
piece of work on hand, and I begin to see how 



136 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

often I have " gone out " feeling quite light- 
headed and absent-minded, after a day's writ- 
ing ; a very poor sort of guest, one must con- 
fess. 

The photograph^ is a delight — so great a 
type ! I look and look at him. What distinc- 
tion there is when you see that straight-lined 
figure among other photographs. I happened 
to put it with some modern things, and felt 
as if I must take it right away. Thank you so 
much, dear. 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 

BucKLANDS Hotel, Brook Street, 
Grosvenor Square, W. 19 Aprils 1898. 

I have seen all your primroses today and 
thought of you, too ! Devonshire and Somer- 
set were all a-bloom, and the brooks were fresh, 
and I heard a black-bird as the train went by, 
and I saw by this morning's Plymouth paper 
that the cuckoo had come and been heard in 
Brixham ; which sounded homelike, because 
Brixham is a parish of the town of York next 
Berwick. And the fields were green and the 
trees showed all their lovely outlines under a 
mist of brown buds and small green leaves. 

^ Of the Charioteer at Delphi. 



LETTERS 137 

They never will be so lovely again all summer. 
Oh, yes, I thought of you, dear ! and it really 
seemed at one moment as if you were look- 
ing out of the car window with me. 

It was a dull voyage and I rejoiced when 
it was ended, though I never had so much 
fresh air as on this new big steamship which 
brought us over. That is saying much, but 
going to sea is going to sea in spite of every- 
thing. This time I read almost constantly, 
which one cannot always do at sea, and I 
liked very much coming into Plymouth, and 
spending the night there, and walking on 
the Hoe this morning, with thoughts of Sir 
Francis Drake and other great persons; but 
most of all of my poor great -grand -father, 
who was so unlucky as to be taken by priva- 
teers and shut into the wretched prison at Dart- 
moor, to know all the horrors of those dark 
days. You will know how eager we were to 
get news from home, and how disappointing 
it was to find that nothing was yet settled and 
that war still seemed near. 

St. Remy en Provence, 16 May, 1898. 
I send you a leaf that you will know from 
this most lovely place, and whereas I last 



138 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

spoke of primroses (I am sorry to think how 
long ago !), I can now speak of the golden 
lilies of France, which grow wild along these 
roadsides, and scarlet poppies and young vine 
leaves and old mulberry-trees, that look rue- 
ful as if they thought it very hard to put 
out nice leaves every year with the other 
trees, only to have them picked for silk- 
worms. Provence is in full flower and leaf 
otherwise. We have seen a good bit of it, 
with several days at Avignon, and some good 
drives across country. I wish that I could 
have had you with me one long day, when 
Miss Travers and I went on pilgrimage to 
Grignan, where Madame de Sevigne spent 
her last days with her daughter, and died at 
last, and was buried. It took us eleven hours 
to make the not very long journey from 
Avignon and back again (a rainy morning 
forcing us to give up a drive and wait for a 
branch train instead), and we had only half 
an hour to see the ruined chateau and ex- 
quisite old French gardens ; but it was one 
of the most delightful things I had ever done. 
The chateau rises high out of a lovely green 
plain like a very small Orvieto, and a solemn 
little old tiled village clusters under it, with a 



LETTERS 139 

tiny market-place where Madame de Sevigne 
sits in her best clothes and her best manner, 
so gay, so Parisian, so French, so enchanting 
and so perfectly incongruous ! You feel as if 
it had not been kind to make her permanent 
in bronze, — that some of the crumbly lime- 
stone of the village would have been a kinder 
material by far, except that it is, after all, 
the crumbling old village that must some day 
go, and she forever stay. Her little garden, 
under a bit of high wall, with the fig-tree she 
writes about, are still there as if she had 
left them yesterday. The pastures were all 
covered with thyme, in bloom just now, and 
the air was blowing down from the snow 
mountains which shut the valley in ; and after 
the wind and rain of the morning, the sun 
had come out and cleared a blue sky like Italy. 
One thinks of Italy always here. I have left 
myself no time or room on this crumply sheet 
of paper to tell you of a most enchanting /ara/i- 
dole which we saw yesterday, in a village near 
by, where all the dancers of different parishes 
had come together. There was never anything 
more exquisite than the whole thing, — the 
open arena with the afternoon light through 
the trees and all the country people so gay, so 



140 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

delighted. The costumes and the grace of the 
whole thing ; the Proven gal dance-tune would 
have delighted you. 

(to MRS. whitman) 

NlMES, 20 May [1898]. 

Dearest S. W., — I have been thinking 
letters to you and not writing them, — you 
will have to take my word for it, there being 
no other sign.'; We have been loitering through 
this lovely country of Provence, with its young 
vines and its old olive trees, and we have lived 
in Avignon and at St. Remy and spent an 
afternoon with M. Mistral, who lives in a great 
house behind fields of grain and grass and 
poppies and rows of mulberry-trees and grey 
olives like his own Mireio. And as you drive 
along the road to go and see him, golden lilies 
of France grow in the brooks, and beyond the 
hedgerows there are acres of big white poppies, 
— a crop of white nuns, one might say they 
looked like, all standing in pious rows in the 
sun. But of all the things I have seen, I wished 
for you the most to see those of yesterday. I 
was walking along a shady road by the river- 
side, above the Pont du Gard (that masterful 
old Roman ruin, which you must know better 



LETTERS 141 

than I did before I came). It was a very shady 
road, and the only travellers besides A. F. and 
me were nightingales, singing most cheerful 
and rustling in the branches overhead. And 
now just let me tell you something : the un- 
derbrush was box, growing in great bushes, 
and the air was about as sweet as it could be 
with that dry, strange, sweet, old scent that 
tries to make you remember things long before 
you were born. And we went walking on, and 
presently we came to great gates, and still 
walked on with innocent hearts and a love of 
pleasure, and we crossed a moat full of flowers 
and green bushes, and the other side of the 
old bridge, beyond two slender marble col- 
umns with exquisite capitals, was another 
gateway and a courtyard and an old chateau 
asleep in the sun. All the great windows and 
the hall door at the top of the steps were 
open, and round the three sides and up to the 
top of the tower green vines had grown, with 
room enough to keep themselves separate, and 
one of them near by was full of bees, and you 
could hear no other sound. It was La Belle 
au Bois dormante. You just kept as still as you 
could and looked a little while, and came away 
again. And the stone of the chateau was red- 



142 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

dish, and the green was green, and the sun- 
shine was of that afternoon softness that made 
the whole sight of the old house flicker and 
smile back at you as if you were trying hard 
to look at something in a dream. It was in a 
lovely corner of the world, far out from any 
town. As we drove back to the — world, 
we came over high pasture lands, where wild 
thyme was growing (own cousin to the box 
in the woods), and we could look off at little 
high brown cities on the hills with one cam- 
panile, as if they had been cities in Italy. And 
one day, from Avignon, I went to the old 
Chateau de Grignan, where Madame de Sevigne 
used to come to stay with her daughter, and 
where she died at last and was buried. The 
chateau was ruined in the Revolution, but 
there is the dear lady's little garden, as if she 
had gone to heaven and left it only last year. 
Her fig-tree, that she writes about sometimes, 
looks very flourishing, and all her wallflowers 
are tumbling over the battlements like a brook. 
I shall have a great deal to tell you some day 
about Chateau de Grignan. Wild thyme grows 
in that country too. It is a very, very out-of- 
the-way corner of the world, and we were all 
day getting there and getting home again to 



LETTERS 14S 

Avignon. And, besides all this, we have seen 
Aries and seen Tarascon and other towns of 
Provence, and we saw a farandole a-dancing 
on a happy Sunday afternoon. 

I am beginning to feel better than when I 
came away, and things are getting on well, 
and so far, for a rainy month of May indeed, 
we had considerable pleasant weather. And 
all this French sight-seeing is full of delight, 
as you know, and I cannot forget. 

Good-bye, darling! I think of you pretty 
often, and I was as glad to get your letter in 
Avignon (most as glad) as if you had come 
walking in yourself. Tell me about the great 
window, for indeed I try very hard to see it 
as it goes up into place. 

LaFerte sous Jouarre, Seine et Marne, 
6 June, 1898. 

Dearest S. W., — It is almost like getting 
home, to find myself here with Madame Blanc 
at last ; and this day is A. F. 's birthday, and 
the big fountain is making all the noise there 
is, and all the birds are singing in the big- 
walled garden, and beyond that, from my win- 
dow in a little room out of my bedroom, where 
I can write you a letter, one can look off over 



144 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the most lovely piece o£ French country: a long 
slope of a hill going up to the sky, muffled 
in green trees, with here and there a line of 
grey wall, or the sharp gable of an old farm- 
house. And an interruption to the green with 
a piece of old weather-beaten red tiling of a 
roof. Which is to say that this is a quiet cor- 
ner of old France, and the oldest bells in the 
world ring now and then very sweet and far 
off. Theresa says that they sound as they do 
because they are the other side of the Marne, 
and " have to come through the water " ! At 
any rate they are like a dream of bells, and I 
heard them first early on Sunday morning, 
yesterday, when I waked up. 

The old town of Jouarre is on another hill, 
a mile or two farther down the river, and there 
is a square tower of the convent as old as the 
time of Charlemagne. Meaux is between us 
and Paris, with the grave of Bossuet in the 
cathedral, and beyond us is Rheims. As for 
Aix, it was as amusing and oddly English as 
ever, and I found my old friends all alive, — 
the funny old peasant women at the baths 
and in the market, with their brown smiling 
faces and white caps. I went to the Grande 
Chartreuse again, that lonely place in the 



LETTERS 145 

mountains, and slept in a cold convent cell, 
and thought that the cliffs overhead might 
tumble down in the night. It is a wonderful 
piece of France, and when one thinks of dis- 
appointed lovers and courtiers going there to 
end their days, and to keep silence and wear 
the white Cistercian habit, of their leaving the 
Paris of that day for the Grande Chartreuse, 
it seems something amazing — human enough, 
one may say, but first a refuge and place of 
comfort, and then a prison and place of long 
despair. I wish that you could see it as one 
comes to it up the long, deep, forested valley, 
with its gay Hght tourelles and peaked roofs, 
as unexpected against the solemn mountain- 
side as the statue of Mme. de Sevigne that 
I told you about in the grim little place at 
Grignan ; but when you get nearer there are 
terrible walls, and you feel that many a heart 
has broken behind them, in winter weather 
and loneliness. 

(to miss saha Norton) 

La Ferte sous Jouarre, 
Seine et Marne, France, June 6 [1898]. 

I am writing all my address at the begin- 
ning, because I am to be here for five or six 



146 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

weeks (I hope !) with occasional flights to Paris 
and to Kheims and so on, — and I think in 
that time you will be finding time to write 
to me how it looks in Ashfield. I was very 
glad to get your letter, but it made me wish 
that you were here, too. I felt sure as I read 
that you were tired with that early summer- 
tiredness, that belongs to New Englanders of 
the old stock. I think there are moments 
when one is sure that we have not had time 
even yet to get acclimated, and the spring 
weather in Old England has a kind of heredi- 
tary ease for us, and superiority. I am a 
grand-child of Mary Chilton, who came to 
Plymouth (like half the old-fashioned persons 
of Massachusetts and Maine!), but I can wilt 
in a May sun as if I had just landed. 

When I read your letter again, just now, 
there was not a word in it that told me how 
you felt, but I have long believed that one 
folds up a bit of what we are pleased to call 
personal atmosphere into one's note-paper and 
that it always gets safe to the journey's end. 
It is a fresh cool day here, with a lovely 
French sky and bright sun, and this is such 
a lovely place ! I am delighted to be with 
Madame Blanc, and it is almost like coming 



LETTERS 147 

home. You would like the old walled-garden, 
with its ^^ pleached walks " and great fountain, 
and prim box - borders, and the dwarf fruit 
trees with young fruit, and the bird's nest 
where the bird is "anxious when you look at 
her, but not frightened enough to fly away," 
as Madame Blanc said yesterday. The night- 
ingales twitter and talk a good deal by day, 
and at the foot of their garden you can un- 
lock a door and find yourself in a country 
lane that leads up the long slope of a great 
green hill. There are two dear little brown 
hunting-dogs — bassets — who live like lords 
in a neat yard at the garden foot, by this 
same door, and you can take them with you if 
you watch them well, and remind them not to 
kill marketable chickens at the first farm-house. 
This is a country of wide views ; you see three 
or four brown villages at a glance ; two of them 
have only a couple of fields to separate them, 
but I suppose when a person marries and 
goes to the other village it is like going among 
strangers altogether, just as they say good-bye, 
almost forever, when they marry in another 
island in Venice. You see that I have great 
pleasure in being here. One loves a bit of real 
country, or else one is indifferent, — it is much 



148 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

more exciting to know a new piece of country 
than to go to a new large town. 

10th of June, I am afraid that this long 
and dull beginning of a letter had better be 
torn in two, but I have only time to write 
half a letter, and not a whole one, before the 
post goes out. I wish that I could take you 
to see the brown old town of Jouarre, on a 
hill near here, with one of its convent towers 
as old as Charlemagne's time, and a curious 
old crypt, covered in the days of the Revolu- 
tion and forgotten, and then rediscovered 
some years ago. There are some wonderful 
old tombs of the lady abbesses, and one of 
them was a young Scottish Princess who looks 
as if she had just climbed to the top of her 
high tomb and fallen asleep there, — a most 
dear and touching shape, — so young that 
time itself has looked on all these years and 
never laid a finger on her, or a troubling 
thought of age. Then, in a very old little 
church close by, is some old glass. One bit of 
a window is King David playing on a harp, 
and I am sure that you would say that it is 
exquisite as it can be in colour and feeling, and 
the sense it gives of great rapture, as with 
music. I long for some kind of copy of it to 



LETTERS 149 

take away ; if ever you can find an afternoon 
to spare in Paris, you must come to see so 
beautiful a thing. I cannot forget it; but 
all this beauty is in a corner of an old grey 
village church, where the windows have been 
mended with glass of another sort, and hardly 
anybody comes from the outside world. Ma- 
dame Blanc had long ago discovered this 
wonderful old window with the King David, 
and was so glad when we found it, too, and 
cared about it as she did. I wish that Mr. Rus- 
kin could have seen it and written about it. 

I have not left myself half room to tell you 
of some old French ladies, who interest me 
very much. There is one — Madame de Beau- 
laincourt — who is the subject of much affec- 
tionate delight ! She is the daughter of the 
Marechal de Castellaine, who was a famous 
soldier in his day, and this dear person is a 
great soldier, too, by nature ; with a wonderful 
distinction and dignity as she sits in her house 
with all her old portraits, and (I am sure) some 
friendly ghosts who come and go and remind 
her of great French histories of courts and 
camps. She was the friend of Madame Blanc's 
mother, and is very fond of my friend. One 
so easily can see today in a strange country, 



150 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

but yesterday is much harder to come at, — so 
that I delight in going to some very old houses 
in Paris, and especially to Madame de Beau- 
laincourt. But La Ferte and the garden, and 
the old church bells, and the towers of Jouarre, 
are very hard to leave. 

I hope now, more than ever, for some better 
news of the war. I feel quite as you do, but 
I think I can see better and better every day 
that it was a war which could not be hindered, 
after all. Spain has shown herself perfectly 
incompetent to maintain any sort of civiliza- 
tion in Cuba, and things are like some sultry 
summer days, when there is nothing for it but 
to let a thunder-shower do its best and worst, 
and drown the new hay, and put everything 
out of gear while it lasts. The condition is 
larger than petty politics or mercenary hopes, 
or naval desires for promotion, or any of those 
things to which at one time or another I have 
indignantly "laid it." I feel more than ever 
that such a war is to be laid at the door of 
progress, and not at any backward steps toward 
what we had begun to feel was out of date, 
the liking for a fight. I think that it is all 
nonsense to talk about bad feeling here in 
France, as it is certainly in England; for how- 



LETTERS 151 

ever people deplore the war in general and 
pity Spain, they generally end by saying that 
it was the only way out — that we had to make 
war, and then we all say that it must be short ! 
If we could drown a few newspapers from 
time to time, it would keep up our drooping 
hearts and make us willing to bear the hear- 
ing of foolish details, and even painful details. 
It seems Hke a question of surgery, this cure 
of Cuba — we must not mind the things that 
disgust and frighten us, if only the surgery is 
in good hands. You know how much I saw 
of those islands two years ago ? I cannot feel 
that the natural conditions of life are hard in 
the way they can be hard to poor Russians, for 
instance : a West Indian cannot freeze — he is 
impatient of clothes — he can pick a good din- 
ner at almost any time of year off the next bush. 
But he can suffer in other ways, and Spain has 
made Cuba suffer in those ways far too long. 
But how long I am writing these small 
thoughts about great things ! You will say 
as the Queen did once in old times about 
Gladstone, — " He speaks to me as if I were 
a public meeting." Forgive me, dear Sally, 
and remember that I shall not be writing about 
the war again ! 



152 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss LOUISA DRESEL) 

14 June, Aix-les-Bains. 

My dear Loulie, — I wonder if Pyrmont 
was anything at all like this ! I remember it well 
enough in your letters to feel that there were 
more differences than likenesses ; but a foreign 
bath-town is a foreign bath-town ! and this 
amuses me a good deal. The rich and illustri- 
ous English have their season just now and 
are very interesting, for the most part, to me ; 
the dignified elderly men and the fine women 
and charming tall girls, all have a refinement 
and kind of perfection of development and 
reasonableness, a repose and decision that I 
like to watch very much. They are so uncon- 
scious and nice when they start off for a walk, 
and wear such an air of satisfaction and tri- 
umph as they return. Later the French and 
Spanish bathers come, — they are already be- 
ginning to appear, and are tres gais as you 
may suppose. 

We know very few people here. Our dear 
friends, the Edmundses, are most companion- 
able, and Mrs. Parkman Blake is a near neigh- 
bour, and most kind and simple and friendly 
always. We have had some little drives and 



LETTERS 153 

long ones together. She is going away soon 
I am sorry to say. 

I liked your letter from the country. I 
always find Pepperell very interesting when 
you go there. I keep stopping in my letter, 
because a funny little Polish dame is playing 
Rubinstein downstairs. She plays pretty finely, 
too, though not so well as she must have 
played before her fingers got quite so old, and 
she is n't very clear about what she means, 
or rather what Rubinstein meant, when she 
comes to some places in the music. Still, a 
great deal of feeling comes up the crooked 
stairs in the notes. She is a cross-looking per- 
son in a funny blonde wig, and has very bad 
manners at table, and has a funny way of 
holding her head over her plate like a hungry 
kitten, until you expect to hear a handsome 
pin that she wears clink against the plate, 
like the aforesaid kitten's padlock ! This is 
very wicked of me, but we are pretty friendly 
nevertheless, and I write in a grateful spirit 
for her good music. I wish you could see 
her, Loulie ! She looks as if she were born in 
the far edge of Poland, or wherever it was 
she came from, but had dwelt much in Paris 
and always by herself, with not even a fel- 



154 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

low kitten for company. It is a great tempta- 
tion to write in this spirit about people you 
don't know, just as I always laugh at every- 
body I choose at a circus — you don't feel ex- 
actly as if they had personality when you don't 
know them, and feel as if they were figures 
merely. " They diint folks, they 're nothin' but 
a parcel of images," an old friend of mine used 
to say, with some truth, — but the minute you 
get beyond a certain point of interest and 
acquaintance, how this all changes ! — I find 
myself beginning to think of new story-people 
in these days, partly because having had two 
or three of my sketches printed has made 
me remember that part of me with surprising 
vividness. I wonder if you won't look up the 
June — no May — " Ladies' Home Journal," 
and read " An Every-day Girl " ? I think there 
are good things in it, and I hope it will make 
two or three things a little plainer to some 
girls who will read it. Good-night, little Lou- 
lie. I must put down my pen now, but I have 
enjoyed this bit of gossip. Love to your 
mother. 



' LETTERS 155 

(to MRS. whitman) 

St. Malo, 3<f July, 

I have been wishing to write to you ever 
since the day I went to Kheims from La Ferte, 
because I feel a little as if I had almost seen 
you there. Whether a little wind that blew 
against you when you were there, is still flick- 
ering among the pillars of the cathedral or 
not, who can say ! but I think we went in to- 
gether and I found something of you at every 
turn. It was a surprise of companionship, with 
all that surprise of beauty and strange solem- 
nity which made me feel as if I had never 
seen a cathedral — even a French cathedral 
— before. Dear friend, I went at one step 
much nearer to you than ever before, and 
who shall say why ? It will be all the same 
and hardly the less dear, even if you say that 
Rheims was the one great cathedral that you 
missed. 

Since then we have spent the last days of 
our visit at La Ferte, and one night in Paris, 
and then started westward to spend a fort- 
night or so in Brittany before Mary and The- 
odore come to Paris. First we continued the 
Madame de Sevigne pilgrimage by going to 



156 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Vitre to see Les Rochers, where she lived so 
much and wrote so many of her letters. I feel 
now as if I knew her very well, that dear lady, 
and as if her old orange trees were mine and 
the pretty echo in the garden. '^ She is always 
new like the spring," as Edward Fitzgerald 
wrote once. Vitre itself is an enchanting old 
town, and the green country most beautiful 
about it, — it was a day of great white clouds, 
like one day when you saw the Hamilton 
house ! 

We went to Mont St. -Michel from Vitre, 
and found it a most perfectly satisfying place ; 
even after all we had read and heard of it, we 
could not believe our own eyes when they saw 
such beauty — not only the mount itself, but 
the wide grey sands with their ribbon of sea- 
water and the rushing tides. 

Ilkley, Yorkshire, 30 Julj/f 1898. 
I long to tell you how much I love this 
Yorkshire country, the Bolton Abbey of 
Wordsworth's " White Doe of Rylstone," and 
Wharf edale, with its green fields that touch the 
sky, and its great brown moors, full of brooks 
and springs and peat-bogs and grown thick 
with budding heather, like fur on their long 



LETTERS 157 

backs. We have climbed them as far as we could 
and driven over them, footing it bravely when 
the carriage could hardly be pulled with us in 
it. On the top the air is the sweetest and cool- 
est air in the world. You follow the old road 
through the heather and fern and see the whole 
sky for once, and the moor, and nothing else. 
Today we went to Haworth and found it 
most appealing. People had said that the 
Bronte church was pulled down and the rec- 
tory all changed, and that a railroad went to 
the town, which had set up manufactures and 
grown to 6000 inhabitants ; but we sagely re- 
membered such advices about other places. 
There were those who told us that there was 
nothing to be seen at " Les Charmettes." So 
we went to Haworth, and it is true that the 
church is a good deal bedizened, that the rec- 
tory is a little modernized, most of all that the 
present vicar resents pilgrims to the shrine of 
the Bronte family, but he did n't bite us. It 
is a dreadfully sad old village. The moors 
aren't so kind and sheltering as at Ilkley, here, 
but farther back from poor Haworth, and the 
plaintive sound of the old chimes will haunt 
my ears for many a day. You go up a long 
steep narrow street to the top of a hill. It all 



158 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

looks pretty much as it did when that house- 
hold, known of the world now, burned their 
lights of genius like candles flaring in a cave, 
like will o'the wisps of their upland country, 
shut up, captives and prisoners, in that gloomy 
old stone house. Nothing you ever read about 
them can make you know them until you go 
there. I can see the little pale faces of those 
sisters at the vicarage windows ; and the Black 
Bull Inn, where the strange young brother 
used to comfort himself with light and laugh- 
ter and country revelry, and break their hearts 
at the same time, is a little way down the 
hill. Never mind people who tell you there is 
nothing to see in the place where people lived 
who interest you. You always find something 
of what made them the souls they were, and 
at any rate you see their sky and their earth. 

Edinburgh, 11 Sept. 
I wish I could possibly tell you anything 
of the charm of Whitby. No wonder dear Mr. 
Lowell grew so fond of it, and of the people 
who spend their autumns there. We saw a 
good deal of the Smalleys and Du Mauriers, 
until we felt like oldest friends. You may ex- 
pect me to be always telling you how delight- 



LETTERS 159 

ful Mr. Du Maurier is. You can't think of him 
at all until you see him and hear him sing his 
old French songs, and have him show you his 
drawings with all the simplicity of a boy with 
a slate, and all the feeling of a great artist. 
He is sadly troubled with his poor failing eyes 
now, but there is always a lovely sunshine in 
his face, and you meet him out walking with 
a timid little fluffy terrier that gets frightened 
and stops all of a tremble, and has to be hunted 
up just when his master is talking most eagerly, 
and turned back for, — such a beloved and 
troublesome little dog. 

Whitby is full of pictures. There were 
places that made me think of your Gloucester 
picture, only a greyer sea and bright red-tiled 
roofs, climbing the steep hill, and a grey old 
abbey at the top of the hill, holding up its 
broken towers and traceries against the clouds. 
It is a noble seacoast and a most quaint fish- 
ing-town, quite unchanged and unspoiled. I 
shall be telling a great deal about the charms 
of Whitby. 

I forgot whether I wrote you just before, or 
just after, our visit to Cobham. No, I am sure 
I have not told you about Mr. Arnold's favor- 
ite walks and his most interesting study, or 



160 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

how delighted I was to find your own rhodo- 
dendrons hanging on the wall. 



(to miss SARA Norton) 

South Berwick, Maine. 

My dear Sally, — It was too bad about 
your missing Lady Macbeth. I wished much 
for you, and indeed Madame Modjeska was 
unexpectedly fine, — quite nobly beautiful. 
She did two or three things which I must put 
among the very best I have ever seen on the 
stage. One felt true greatness in her playing. 
I used to think of her as quite charming and 
most intelligent and often vigorous, but she 
went far beyond all these that night. You 
would have cared very much for her, — but 
alas, one must miss such pleasures. I don't like 
to think of your losing a day now and then, 
dear, except that there must come a " break " 
and a Sunday, somehow ! I don't know what 
we should do if we were not stopped by force 
now and then, — the scheme of our life is 
built on unending activity, or else an active New 
England conscience falls to upbraiding us. 

I have been busy enough since I came home, 
chiefly here at the old desk. There are a great 



LETTERS 161 

many birds already, robins and song-sparrows 
have all come, but there are some old snow- 
drifts sitting round on the hills to keep watch. 

(to MRS. whitman) 

S. Y. Hermione, 
Nassau, Wednesday, 16 January^ 1899. 

And I a - writing to a friend on a pleasant 
summer morning and wishing that we could 
have a word together. Two days ago I was 
ready to change places with the coldest old 
hurdy-gurdy woman that ever sat at the State 
House corner, and nobody cared whether the 
Gulf Stream was blue or whether it was pink ; 
but yesterday I waked up in Nassau harbour 
and all was well, and we went ashore to 
luncheon, and life seemed to begin with fly- 
ing colors. It is a charming little town along 
the waterside, with its little square houses 
with four-sided thatched roofs; and down the 
side lanes come women carrying things on 
their heads, firewood and large baskets of 
grapes, and an idle man-person on a small 
donkey, and little black darkeys, oh, very black, 
with outgrown white garments. I think it is 
a little like Italy, but I suppose it is really 
more like Spain. And I who write you have 



162 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

seen cocoanuts a -growing, and as we drove 
along the bushy roads, A. F. did so squeak 
aloud for joy at every new bush and tree and 
tame flower a-growingwild. And when I found 
how easy it is to get here all the way by rail 
to Florida, and across from Palm Beach (Jupi- 
ter Inlet) in a day, I wonder that more people 
don't come to this charming Victoria Hotel 
among its great silk-cotton trees, instead of 
staying in all the dull little sandy southern 
towns of the Carolinas. You would see such 
pictures. I love your Bermuda sketches a thou- 
sand times more than ever now. 

I still have that sense of distance which 
tries one's spirits ; but distance is its own cure 
and remedy, and all but one's swiftest thoughts 
at last stop flying back, and you get the habit 
of living where you are. Who was it said that 
you never get to a place until a day after you 
come, nor leave it until a day after you go ? 

(to miss LOUISA DRESEL) 

Steam Yacht Hermione, 
Kingston, Jamaica, January 30, 1899. 

Dear Loulie, — I was so glad to get your 
letter today, and so was Mrs. Fields. We are 
having a very much better time as we go on, 



LETTERS 163 

for A. F. Is better and I, too, and I find Ja- 
maica a most enchantingly beautiful country. 
My fellow travellers say that Ceylon is not a 
bit more beautiful. We have been a week in 
Nassau, where I wrote you, and then came 
down through the Bahamas, stopping only at 
Inagua, a strange lonely island which I must 
tell you about some day, with its wild marshes 
and a huge flock of flamingos, like all your 
best red paints spilt on the shining mud. 
There had once been square miles of salt works 
which were ruined by a tornado, and now the 
flamingos blow about there like flames. Then 
we went to Hayti, which was oh, so funny with 
its pomp of darkeys. Port au Prince was quite 
an awful scene of thriftlessness and silly pre- 
tense — but one or two little Hay tian harbours 
and the high green coast were most lovely. 
And then Jamaica, with all its new trees and 
flowers, and its coolies, Loulie ! with their 
bangles and turbans and strange eyes. You 
would like Jamaica immensely. 

Your news of the bicycle is very entertain- 
ing. You will be cutting by a slow-footed friend 
any day after I get back. I think it is so good 
for you, — one needs a serious reason for get- 
ting out of doors sometimes, and a bicycle is a 



164 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

very serious reason indeed. The roads are so 
fine here, winding and looping along the sides 
of the hills as they do in Switzerland, — fine 
English-made roads, — and you look up to the 
great mountains, and down to the blue sea. 

I am writing in a hurry to catch a mail, and I 
send ever so much love to you and to dear Mrs. 
Dresel, and I know A. F. sends her love too. 

You will find this an old date, dear Loulie, 
but the letter was overlooked when our last 
mail was sent ashore, and there hasn't been 
one since, this being the 19th of February ! 
We are on our way to Nassau now, expecting 
to reach there in a few days. We got into a 
port way down in Porto Rico, and after they 
had collected all the fees they told us if we 
went on to St. Thomas (where all our letters 
were ! ), or to any of the Windward Islands upon 
which our hearts were set, we should have to 
go through a long quarantine ! So we turned 
meekly around and came back all our long way, 
but we have seen a good many islands and 
many rough seas and I feel more resigned 
now than I did at first. We are sure to be at 
home in two or three weeks now if all goes well. 
I think this is a more important postscript 
than letter 1 



LETTERS 165 

(to MRS. fields) 

Saturday nigbt. 

Dearest, — The letter by Mr. CoUyer was 
from a person who sought to know my opin- 
ion of the novel of the future ! But he never 
will. 

I copied for him those two wonderful 
bits of Flaubert, — " Ecrire la vie ordinaire 
comme on ecrit Thistoire " ; and the other, " Ce 
n'est pas de faire rire — mais d'agir a la fagon 
de la nature, e'est a dire de faire rever." I 
keep these pinned up on the little drawers at 
the back of the secretary, for a constant re- 
minder. 

I now humbly apologize for presuming to 
suggest "Wanda," but I thought it would 
amuse you and waste a day or two's time just 
as it has done ! It grows dull at the last, but 
it is nice and picturesque at the beginning. I 
don't believe that you are any the worse for 
it — you aren't quite equal to hard reading 
and you must be doing something on account 
of your grand-mother's having been a May. I 
hope after this humility to be reinstated in 
your respect and affection. Novels are good 
as they go along. It is only when they stop 



166 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

that you take it in that the pretty bubble is 
made of a spatter of soap suds ! (Please to re- 
member this nice simile !) 

As you say, what a delightful thing it is 
to have the mood for books on one and the 
chance to give up everything for it, but with 
me it does n't last many days, that enchanting 
and desperate state of devouring cover and all. 

(to miss DOROTHY WARd) 
South Berwick, Maine, January 20, 1900. 
My dear Dorothy, — How good of you to 
send me this photograph by Sally, who came 
to bring it one day before I came away from 
Town ! It made me wish to see you the least 
bit too much, and made me fall at once to 
thinking how long it is since I saw you in 
the summer weather at Stocks. But one must 
look at it often in these sad conditions, and 
finally gather a good bit of companionship 
out of a photograph, it being all that one 
can get ! If somebody would only invent a 
little speaking-attachment to such pictures, a 
nicer sort of phonograph, — it would really 
be very nice; you might mention this to your 
Aunt Ethel with my love. Speaking-likenesses 



LETTERS 167 

have not really been put into an eager mar- 
ket yet, in spite of the phrase being so old. 

I have been wishing to say these many 
days with what delight we have read the first 
number of the new story which opened in 
such a masterful way, and with such large 
promise. I am hoping for the same windfall 
which I had when ^^Sir George" was print- 
ing, — of some numbers ahead, — but who 
knows if such luck will happen to me again ? 
I think the American girl a very living per- 
son, the art and the sympathy that went to 
her writing are most wonderful. I am full of 
expectation and so is Mrs. Fields; we can 
hardly say to each other how much we liked 
that first number and count upon the second, 
and I have heard many another person say 
the same. It seems to me like a great success 
already, but I confess with wistfulness that 
every time a door opened, I hoped that it 
was Marcella coming in. Do not speak coldly 
to me of the resources of a great novelist 
now that you have seen my heart! 

Have I owed you a letter for a very long 
time, dear Dorothy, or is it you who have 
thought that Sally would give me news and 
messages? This she has done, but I should 



168 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

so like a letter to myself from Stocks, with 
something about everybody, and even a word 
about the pony who brought us safe home, 
though such an unwilling person on the road. 
I hope that your Mother is just as well as the 
story sounds, — and you must give her my 
dear love and true thanks. You will both 
like to know that Sally is looking very well 
this winter — . . . dear child! I have not 
seen her half as much as I wish, for I have 
been much in the country, and it takes a 
good bit more time to live in two places than 
in one. Mrs. Fields and I were much tempted 
in the autumn to go to Egypt with a friend 
who asked us, but I do not like to think of 
being so far away from my sister, who would 
be very lonely. My nephew is still in Har- 
vard, and we three are all the house now, so 
that I have not the heart to take this one 
away, and leave but one in the old place. It 
is a delightful winter here as to weather, and 
yet the shadows and sorrows of war make it 
dark enough. The questions of our difficult 
Philippines are half forgotten — it is almost 
strange to say so — in the anxiety about 
South Africa; but I like to take comfort 
from this, and other signs, and remember 



LETTERS 169 

how much closer Old England and New Eng- 
land have come together in the last two 
years. That is good, at any rate. I had a 
most delightful proof of it in the way that 
many quite unexpected persons felt about a 
sketch I wrote (and meant to send to you!) 
called "The Queen's Twin." It was most 
touching to see how everybody approves it, 
and told little tales to prove that it might be 
true — and was at any rate right in its sen- 
timent ! But I must not write longer — only 
to say that I thank you, dear, and that you 
must not forget to give my love to Jan. 



(to miss SARA Norton) 

Hotel Bristol, Naples, 18 March, 1900. 
I tell you but short tales of our very stormy 
and difficult voyage and of water deep in our 
staterooms and boats going away in the gale, 
and a beating about in one's berth that I 
have hardly got over yet, but will go on to 
say that we have had some good days in Na- 
ples and have just come back from two nights 
at my beloved La Cava with its pigeon towers 
and reminders of Sir Walter on his last jour- 
ney. I have been to Psestum again, which 



170 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

joy I never expected, and we also had some 
hours on Friday at Pompeii. We were going 
up to Kavello for a night at least, but it is 
quite bitter cold weather just now and has 
turned to pouring rain, so that this Sunday 
morning we hurried back to our most com- 
fortable quarters here. We still have until 
Wednesday, when we start for Brindisi and 
Patras. We have had the best of chances to 
see the Museum here. There is nothing so 
beautiful as this Orpheus and Eurydice, and 
I fairly ran to find a certain little Pompeiian 
picture of the girl who turns back to gather 
flowers ! I wonder if you remember it ? It is 
one of the perfectly un-copyable things. The 
spring in Italy seems very cold and late ; there 
are n't green leaves enough, and everything 
has a sort of bony look that makes the really 
unlovely things almost unbearable. I caught 
myself thinking yesterday as I passed one of 
the poorer and newer villages that it was ugly, 
and that I could prefer the sight of one of 
our own little manufacturing towns with its 
quaint rows of sharp gables and even its appar- 
ent danger of blowing away ! But the grey fig 
trees are beginning to show little green silk 
tufts, and the olives are quite dark and splendid 



LETTERS 171 

on the hills back of Salerno, — as thick and 
warm and tufted as one of my own hills of 
pines. You see what a New England — I 
may say State of Maine — person now holds the 
pen ! These olives are so much richer than the 
olives in Provence where I saw them last: I 
can't say how beautiful they were yesterday. 
It is a wonderful old Italy though I accuse 
it so cheaply of cold and bleakness. Right in 
front of me is a flower of asphodel which we 
brought from Psestum yesterday, but the pink 
cyclamen were not yet in bloom and very few 
daffodils. 



(to MRS. whitman) 

Athens, 27 March, 1900. 

Then we came to Brindisi, an all-day jour- 
ney through green valleys and between great 
ranges of the Apennines, all topped with snow, 
and took the steamer which got to Corfu 
next day and to Greece the next, and then 
we were all day again in the trains going along 
the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, ! 
and at sunset we saw the light on the 
Acropolis and all the great pillars of the 
Parthenon high against the sky. And pretty 



172 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

near every waking hour since then I have wished 
for you at least once. There is nothing for it 
but to go to the Museum every morning, and 
to the Acropolis every afternoon. 

We make many plots for the next few 
weeks. To go to Megara, for instance, to see 
the Easter Dances. But oh, how I wish for 
you ! It is quite true that there is nothing so 
beautiful as Athens, the Parthenon and the 
marbles in the Museum. I don't suppose that 
you have been waiting for me to assure you 
of this fact; but when I think what you 
would say, and feel, at the sight of this 
spring landscape and the wintry sky, of such 
astonishing blue, with its blinding light, like 
one of our winter mornings after a snow- 
storm, and the colors of the mountain ranges 
and the sea, dazzling and rimmed by far-off 
islands and mountains to the south; as one 
looks from the Acropolis and all the spring 
fields below and the old columns and the little 
near-by flowers, poppies and daisies, — Oh, 
when I see all this and think that you can't 
see it, too ! And then, when I remember what 
my feelings have been toward the Orpheus 
and Eurydice and the Bacchic Dance, and 
then see these wonderful marbles here, row 



LETTERS 173 

upon row, it is quite too much for a plain 
heart to bear. I have come to the place 
where I can get quickly through the rooms, 
but I must look at a certain nine every time 
and spend all the time (at present) that I can 
get before a special one (or two). If the 
special one were not next that which has the 
young man with his dog, and the old father, 
and the little weeping slave -boy, I should 
have to divide the aforesaid time into two. It 
is n't the least bit of use to try to write about 
those marbles, but they are simply the most 
human and affecting and beautiful things in 
the world. The partings, the promises, are im- 
mortal and sacred, they are Life and not only 
Lives ; and yet the character in them is almost 
more than the art to me, being a plain story- 
writer, but full of hopes and dreams. 

This was a httle flower for you that grew 
on the Hill today. I feel as if this letter were 
too dry and crumpled to send, just as the 
flower is, with none of the life of the things 
it tries to stand for. 

Megalopolis, 15 April [1900]. 
This is a small town in Arcadia in the 
middle of a green plain, to which we came 



174 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

over the mountains yesterday, driving for the 
third, fourth, fifth or sixth day on our jour- 
ney from the east coast to the west, by Nauplia 
and Mycenae and Epidaurus to Tripolitza and 
Sparta. As I write these names, I cannot help 
thinking how lately they were nothing but 
names ; and now each stands for a place un- 
like any other, and each makes a great land- 
scape rise before one of mountain and plain 
and great white columns against the blue sky 
and blinding light, and all the Greek flowers 
bloom again, asphodels here, and poppies there. 
Here in this muddy, noisy little place, we 
are opposite the old church with its bell-tower 
and single tall cypress, and it is the Greek 
Palm Sunday, just a week later than ours. 
And all the flocks go tinkling by, and all the 
little boys are playing games and squabbling 
like sparrows over in the church-yard. But 
at home I think of the Class at Easter, and 
Katy not there and I not there, and I keep 
wondering about you, and if Coolidge will 
have come, and I should like to have a flower 
in a letter so as to know you thought of me. 
I got your dear last letter this week, and heard 
about Dr. Mitchell and Owen Wister, and all 
those flowering days of mid-March, and I 



LETTERS 175 

wish I could pass judgment right now on 
the portrait. It begins to feel as if we had 
really come away for a short time, and as 
if I should be at home again in six weeks 
if all goes well, but up to this day I have 
had a queer sense of being off in space, 
with months before me; of wandering in 
the East, with dragomen and cooks, and all 
our bags and shawl-straps to be taken out 
of the carriage and opened at night, and 
rolled up and shut again and loaded in the 
mornings, with a huge new-old stone theatre 
to see in a hill-side, and the snow mountains 
looking over the tops of the purple ones in 
every quarter of Greece. How you would love 
the handsome sturdy people and the clear- 
eyed children. Such colors to paint and such 
glimpses of history in every shepherd on the 
hills and every hoplite that stalks along the 
endless roads in his white kilt and stockings 
and his red cap. Greece is most archaic still 
to the casual looker-on. 

We are just bound down to the coast this 
afternoon, where we shall take a steamer to 
the neighborhood of Olympia, and then, if 
we can get time enough, we go to Delphi be- 
fore getting back to Athens on the 22d. Then 



176 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

we mean to go on eastward for a single week 
in Constantinople, even if it costs us the sight 
of Thessaly; but whether we do the one or 
the other is uncertain to me in this present 
moment, for sometimes we think of things we 
might see in six days to be spent at sea get- 
ting back to Venice ! But I keep thinking 
that I shall never be, so to speak, so handy 
to Constantinople again, and I should like to 
have the means of making the Arabian Nights 
come true. And we shall really have seen so 
much of Greece. 

I send you much love and many a thought, 
and I wish that I could put half the things 
into this letter that you would like to read 
and I to write. But you must take this leaf 
of Bay instead, and call it Palm Sunday or 
Easter, just as you like. 

(to miss SARA Norton) 

Manchester, Tuesday [June, 1901]. 

Dearest Sally, — Class day was really an 
exquisite thing to see ! I did not take in the 
beauty of its spectacle until I happened to go 
to Dana's room in Holworthy, and to sit on 
a window-seat looking down the Yard just be- 



LETTERS 177 

fore we went to the Statue. The sun was get- 
ting low enough to slant across under the 
elms, and the lanterns were lit by it before 
their time with a strange light of day that 
was better than candles. The people too, 
though they were going on to the next plea- 
sure, had a look of leisure as they went along 
the paths, as if they were counting over the 
last pleasure instead of anticipating a new 
one. There was such a satisfaction in the 
beauty of the whole afternoon's festival. I 
have never seen anything quite like it. I keep 
thinking as I try to write of that most lovely 
page of Fitzgerald's in "Euphranor" — "and 
a nightingale began to sing" — it ends; you 
remember what I mean? — after the boat- 
race! 

Forgive such a note — my pen will not keep 
itself steady ; it is like trying to write with a 
small bird's beak ! 

Yours ever most lovingly. 

(to MRS. fields) 

South Berwick, Friday afternoon [/wne, 1901]. 

Here we are at home again. ^ I have so much 
to tell that my pen splutters. | I have had a 



178 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

beautiful time full of delightful old associa- 
tions. You can't think how nice it was to be 
the single sister of so many brothers at Bow- 
doin, walking in the procession in cap and 
gown and Doctor's hood, and being fetched by 
a marshal to the President, to sit on the plat- 
form with the Board of Overseers and the 
Trustees, also the Chief Justice and all the 
judges of the Supreme Court, who were in 
session in Portland, or somewhere near by ! 
And being welcomed by the President in a set 
speech as the only daughter of Bowdoin, and 
rising humbly to make the best bow she could. 
But what was most touching was the old chap- 
lain of the day who spoke about father in his 
" bidding prayer," and said those things of 
him which were all true. And your S. 0. J. 
applauded twice by so great an audience ! 

I told Dr. Hyde that I should ask Mrs. 
Whitman to make a window. I hope that you 
will approve this plan — it will be a really 
beautiful and permanent memorial to leave. 
They are making up a fund, but the money 
that I could give will count so much more in 
this way. Mary was dear and lovely, and the 
great day was hers as much as mine, as you 
will know. 



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From a photograph token by Miss Elise Tyson in 1903 



LETTERS 179 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 

Manchester by Sea, August 28, 1901. 

My dearest Sally, — I hear of you at 
Windsor and in other far countries, and the 
summer goes parading by, here on the shore 
(where I have been staying once before since 
August came in), after some perfect days at 
home, and a bit of a visit to Miss Longfellow 
at Holderness, where we played much on the 
lake and in it, and I had one perfectly happy 
long morning when we went huckleberrying 
together with enormous profit to the rest of 
the household ! There is a charming sort of 
easy life going on about those lake shores. 
One is more shut in by mountains than on 
Winnipiseogee, — which is so much better 
known, — and sees all the colours of the great 
slopes change and change with the slow cloud 
shadows. The house where I stayed is so close 
to the lake that the little waves come clucking 
up to the very walls, and one lands as imme- 
diately as if it were Venice, and hears the loons 
calling as if it were still a wilderness. 

My thoughts fly to Stonehurst at this mo- 
ment and I wonder with considerable wistful- 
ness if we shall really get to that kind house 



180 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

this summer. Perhaps it might be in late 
September. 

"The Tory Lover" got itself quite done at 
last, — though almost every day I get hurried 
notes from The House with questions about 
last things. I grow very melancholy if I fall 
to thinking of the distance between my poor 
story and the first dreams of it, but I believe 
that I have done it just as well as I could. I 
was delighted the other day when Mrs. Agas- 
siz said that she had been doubtful in the be- 
ginning, but had really liked each number 
better than the last, and I found that my peo- 
ple had made her a real pleasure in the end. 
One needs these things for cheer. 

This morning I have been copying Mr. 
Kipling's " Bridge-Guard " poem with great 
delight. Some one lent me his copy cut from 
the " Times," and I had not succeeded in get- 
ting hold of it before. Don't you think it very 
fine ? Don't you feel the same wonderful self- 
consciousness in it as in " For to admire and 
for to see " f One sees and feels that lonely 
place in a wonderful way. If you were here 
how we could talk about it! 



LETTERS 181 

South Berwick, Thursday, 20th March [1902]. 

On Sunday evening Mrs. Meynell is ex- 
pected, and both Mrs. Fields and I look for- 
ward to seeing her with great pleasure. We 
have cared a good deal for the thoughtfulness 
and beauty, and above all for the reticence and 
restraint, of her poems and brief essays. I sup- 
pose that Mr. Ruskin first set our eyes in her 
direction when he was so enthusiastic long ago 
about her letter from a girl to her own old 
age, but it is one of her poems that I really 
care least about now. One always cares 
about "Renouncement," that beautiful son- 
net, though one discovers after a time that she 
ought to have called it " Possession," or some- 
thing of that sort ! 

It is a great delight that your father has 
promised to come to dinner on Tuesday. I 
can't help hoping that I shall see you on 
Wednesday morning, if not before; Mrs. 
Meynell has a reading on seventeenth-century 
poetry. She is going to give it to some club or 
company in London, and wished to try it here 
first. It is always interesting (though some- 
times a cause for apprehension) to have a 
friend come in this way — to see an old friend 
for the first time, as one may say; but both 



18a SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Shady Hill and 148 Charles Street have gath- 
ered many an angel so, and strangers are not 
real strangers when they are of the world of 
letters. 

I do not forget that we are to see Dorothy 
again so soon, or to look forward with delight. 
It is a great pleasure to have had her here in 
the old house, such guests never really go away 
— which makes an old house very different 
from a new one ! 



(to MR. DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH) 

South Berwick, Maine, April 6, 1902. 

Dear Mr. Douglas, — The photograph de- 
lighted me of the quaint old Scottish house of 
Traquair ! I had never seen any picture of it. 
I hope that it may not be many years before 
my hope comes true of spending some time in 
Scotland, and seeing many and many an old 
house. I never forget the pleasure of that day 
with you both at Hawthornden, how often 
Mrs. Fields and I speak of it ! You see that I 
too have run away from town ? It is a very 
early spring with us. I have never in my life 
seen our " Mayflowers " (the trailing arbutus) in 
full bloom on April 6th as I saw them to-day. 



LETTERS^ 183 

(to miss SABA Norton) 

South Berwick, Maine, June 30 [1902]. 

I am just having a little visit from Mrs. 
Riggs, — the author of our beloved "Penelope 
in Ireland." We have known each other in 
a pleasant way for a good many years. I hap- 
pened to be near her in London once, and 
last week when I happened to be in Brunswick, 
she was there too, and to my great pleasure 
said that she should like to come over to 
Berwick. She is the very nice person who 
wrote our enchanting book. Being with her 
has reminded me of your pleasure in her 
story last year, as well as mine. One doesn't 
always find the writer of the story, — at least 
in early acquaintance! but with Mrs. Biggs 
there is the certainty that one might go right 
on, and see the next chapter, and Salemina 
and the maid are absent only for the moment. 

Great things have been happening in Ber- 
wick : there was the 200th anniversary of the 
old village church (that was the time, 1702, 
when we were converted by missionaries from 
Harvard, and before we had been only a little 
royal colony with Church of England preach- 
ing) ! 



184 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to MRS. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD) 

South Berwick, Maine, December 31, 1902. 

My dear Friend, — - 1 am late in thanking 
you for my dear little Christmas book, but I 
wished to read it before I wrote, and these 
have not been good reading-days. It is a dear 
story : I felt almost as if I were seven years 
old again and cuddled into a corner with my 
beloved story of " Mr. Kutherford's Chil- 
dren." The same feeling came over me as 
nearly as it ever can come again. Your story 
walks faster, as a story of these days should, 
but there are very real people and real experi- 
ences, and your charming fancy — your quick 
imagination — your beloved sympathy, make 
the pages live. What any " sister authoress" 
would really love to do would be to hold the 
pen that was equal to writing you ! 

But I must write no more at this hour of 
night ! I hope to see you very soon, as I am 
coming back to town presently. 

(to MRS. fields) 

Saturday morning. 

And now the ball is over, and I suppose a 
tired hostess, and the chairs all going upstairs 



LETTERS 185 

again, and the dear room will look like a green 
garden that no wind ever blows over ! I do so 
long to hear if it went off to your mind, and 
if the company liked the singing, and where 
it was you hung the lantern ! and oh, dear ! 
a thousand questions! 

Yesterday afternoon I amused myself with 
Miss Austen's " Persuasion/' Dear me, how 
like her people are to the people we knew 
years ago ! It is just as much New England 
before the war — that is, in provincial towns 
— as it ever was Old England. I am going to 
read another, " Persuasion " tasted so good I 
I have n't read them for some time. 

I long to know if you have read dear Alice 
Meynell's paper in the "Atlantic." She has 
changed it in places from her lecture to an 
essay, and I can't find just the places where 
she laughed aloud and all the audience with 
her ; but what a rich bit of writing it is — and 
of such depth and such inexhaustible charm ! 

Somebody sent me the other day a pamphlet 
with an address about Count Rumford, and, 
best of all, stuck on a fly-leaf is a cutting 
from an old newspaper with the list of their 
household goods, which were sold at auction 



186 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

in Brompton when the countess left London. 
It mentions Jive lofty y four-post beds, which 
pleases me much. This was a kind of man who 
had seen in a newspaper that I was going to 
write about the Kumfords, and I thank him 
very much for his pamphlet ! 

(to IMR. DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH) 

South Berwick, Maine. 
Dear Mr. Douglas, — The very day that 
your letter came I was sending you a copy of 
Mr. Owen Wister's new story. I find it so de- 
lightful—worthy of himself and worthy of 
Fanny Kemble's journals. It has so charming 
a humour and so humorous a charm 1 and tastes 
as good as the cake itself. The serious talk 
about the cheap side of American life just 
now is not at all too severe, but we must look 
on with what patience we can at the doings 
of those who have no inherited sense or dis- 
cretion in the use of money: as a wise old 
friend said to me not long ago, their grand- 
parents or even their own parents went hun- 
gry and ill clothed, and it will take some time 
for these people to have their fling, to eat all 
they want and to wear fine raiment, and flaunt 
authority. They must get to a state, and by 



LETTERS 187 

slow stages too, where there is going to be 
something fit for education. " It is just the 
way that in the South, still, one sees the col- 
oured people on aimless journeys : in the old 
days they could not leave their plantations. 
They won't be satisfied with that exercise of 
liberty for generations yet!" The years of 
leanness are succeeded by many more than 
seven fat years in all these people. The trou- 
ble is to us old-fashioned New Englanders 
that ^ the cheap streak ' so often spoils what 
there is of good inheritance, and the wrong 
side of our great material prosperity is seen 
almost everywhere. These are sad reflections ! 
— but I often remind myself of the better 
side of life, a hope that it is truly an immor- 
tal sort of leaven. 

My Lockhart came to-day and, as I had ex- 
pected, I found you before I had gone far in 
the preface. Do not write just to acknow- 
ledge the book ; those dutiful notes rob us of 
time to write the letters we care more for ! 

Our "Atlantic " editor, Mr. Bliss Perry, goes 
over to England this summer. I hope you will 
see him in Edinburgh, — a delightful man 
with true enthusiasm for the best things. 



188 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 

South Berwick, Thursday. 
I have been hoping to write to you, but, 
oddly enough now, when I am supposed to be 
better, it has grown a great deal harder either 
to read or write. But I shall not let you go 
away without a word to say how much I love 
you. I am glad you liked that little book of 
Mrs. MeynelFs. There is something so charm- 
ing to me in the way she arranged it — the 
harmony — and the inevitableness of her own 
choice and good taste have done that perhaps. 
I had a little hope that you might carry it with 
you ; sometimes it has been the only book that 
I could read for days. I was so sorry that I 
sent it away with such smudgy fly-leaves, — 
you might take an idle day on shipboard and 
make it clean again ! I have a bad habit of 
writing in my books as if no one else were 
ever going to read them. 

This year she wrote in the spring to her 
friend Ellen Chase : — 

"Did you hear all the song -sparrows as 
they came by on their way to Berwick ? 

" I have been ill, but you will tell me if the 



LETTERS 189 

* Pointed Firs ' look all right this year, won't 
you?" 

(to MRS. HENRY PARKMAN) 

Manchester by Sea, Wednesday. 

Dearest Frances, — Did you ever see a 
little sermon called " Happiness," that S. W. 
wrote years ago, and printed in a book that 
Mrs. James Lodge put together? partly her 
own writing, with a really delightful preface, 
and partly stories — translations and verses, 
etc. ; all amateur work in a way, but it made 
a pretty gold and white book called " A Week 
away from Time." I had much to do with it 
and it always brings back some very pleasant 
things. Mrs. Fields and I re-read the sermon 
on Sunday, after I had again got hold of it 
myself, and with new admiration. Mrs. Fields 
always said that it was the best of the book 
and liked it dearly, but I was not so sure theUf 
and on Sunday I liked it a thousand times 
more than ever before. I '11 send you the book 
if you like and don't know it. 

I had a most dear letter from Mrs. Wolcott. 
I wish that you and she could read " The Way 
it Came," my favorite among all Mr. James's 
stories, together, when she gets to you. I 



190 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

marked that, and "The Liar/' which comes 
next, in their respective volumes. " The Way 
it Came " is a great story, / think, so full of 
feeling and of a subtle knowledge of human 
nature, of the joyful hopes, and enlighten- 
ments and grey disappointments of life — the 
things we truly live by ! — I don't know how 
many times I have read this or the half dozen 
others that come next: "The Liar," "The 
Death of the Lion," etc. 

Poland Spring House, Monday. 
I think this great place would amuse you 
some time — perhaps we could forsake the 
world together for a week ! — but the line be- 
tween being innocently amused and wickedly 
bored is very narrow. It is a little like what 
crossing the continent with a big train party 
must be, — not the people you or I run across 
very often, but all sorts of terrible rich and 
splendid westerners and southerners of a sort 
who must have had German grand-mas and 
have prospered in the immediate past. Their 
jewels and their gowns are a wonder, and the 
satisfaction in life must be very great, though 
the best of them look as if keeping things 
just right and according to at this high rate 



LETTERS 191 

were almost too much effort. It is the kind of 
rich creatures who are more at home in big 
hotels than in fine houses. They are apt to 
speak of last winter at "Pa'm Beach/' and al- 
together they made me understand what my old 
grand-father, who had travelled wide, meant 
when he said, " Oh, they 're not people, they 're 
nothing but a pack of images ! " This is in the 
mass ; one individual opposite me at the table 
has been quite entertaining ; such a diamond 
cross she wears upon her ; but I must hold back 
from relating such parts of her history as have 
been ascertained, — automobile and private 
car. A great many puzzling facts were brought 
together into simple certainty yesterday when 
I heard somebody say she was a prosperous re- 
tired hotel-keeper. It made you see her fine and 
masterful above quailing maids. These dazzle 
one's eyes; but now and then, when you see 
the backs of two dear heads of ladies a table 
or two away, you feel as if you must stop and 
speak ! I feel sure out of two or three hun- 
dred fellow pilgrims I must find as many of 
my betters, but I have been so long away that 
my country seems strange in its great crowd 
of citizens. One thing certain is, it is a rich 
country, — it is like Eome before it fell ! And 



192 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the clouds have all blown out of the mountains 
yesterday and today. I can see them all safe 
and sound, — the Mount Washington range 
just as I used to see it all last summer; but 
we are far enough away to see the other 
ranges by themselves — Ossipee and the rest. 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 

Thursday, November 20. 

How much I wish for you at this moment, 
Sally dear ! but it must be a heavenly day at 
Newport, and without this touch of the North 
that makes a fire not look unwelcome in my 
room. Now that the leaves are down I can see 
the smooth top of my hill like a little York- 
shire moor, and it makes me wish that we were 
walking there again. Oddly enough I am just 
reading one of Mrs. Ritchie's stories that keeps 
one much out of doors in the Lake Country, 
— ^'Mrs. Dymond," — and between reading 
and looking up at the hill, I got too keen a 
sense of being housebound ! One flies to Miss 
Thackeray's stories at certain turns of Fate, 
for a world full of shadows, and written out 
of deep and touching experience, but with 
beauty and consolation never forgotten or cur- 



LETTERS 193 

tained away. Don't you remember Fitzgerald's 
saying somewhere that he thirsts for the De- 
lightful as he grows old and dry ? Perhaps 
he was writing about Miss Thackeray then — 
the Village on the Cliff which he really loved. 
Get rested, dear, and make the most of 
these days in Newport by doing just the least 
you can with them ! I think of you most lov- 
ingly and oftener than I can dare to say. As 
for me, I am much the same, getting back little 
by little to ordinary life, but not downstairs 
yet, or equal to much that can be really called 
decent or properly useful behaviour. 



(to miss ELLEN CHASE) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
Friday, 23 September, 1904. 

My dear Ellen, — I must thank you, too, 
for your royal present of the Herbal, which 
was waiting for me when I got home from the 
mountains. I am put on such short commons 
of reading and writing, and can manage to do 
so little of either, yet, that after the first de- 
lighted look I had to fall back on the (after 
all ! ) deep joys of possession. But I look for- 
ward to the day when I can quite live between 



194 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the covers of that great book. I have thought 
of you many and many a time this summer, 
and always with a true gratitude for your 
dear thoughtfulness and kindness in so many 
ways. 

Yours most affectionately. 



(to CHARLES MINER THOMPSON) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
October 12, 1904. 

My dear Mr. Thompson, — I wish that 
I could have written sooner to tell you how 
deeply I feel the kindness and sympathy for 
my stories in your "Atlantic" paper. Per- 
haps you may know already that I have not 
yet recovered from a bad accident and long 
illness that followed it, and that I find it very 
difficult now to read or to write, and so you 
will not have thought me unmindful of such 
friendliness as you have shown to me and to 
my work. If you felt the difficulty of which 
you speak in your first paragraph, in writing 
about a writer, I feel, too, as one might who 
heard some one begin to speak frankly of one's 
self in the next room. This has been an innocent 
sort of eaves-dropping, and not without profit 



LETTERS 195 

and suggestion, as well as happy reassurance 
for me. Indeed, I understand that "The 
Country Doctor " is of no value as a novel, but 
it has many excellent ideas, for which I must 
thank not only my father's teaching, but my 
father himself. It only makes me wish to see 
you some day, when we can talk together as 
much as we wish, now that I am trying to 
write this letter to you ; indeed, there are many 
points in your paper that give one something 
to think about and to say. I was looking at 
a translation of one of Turguenieff's stories, 
" Eudin," not long ago, and came upon some- 
thing in Stepniak's preface to the book which 
struck me deeply with its likeness to some of 
your own words about — not a Master by any 
means, but a story-writer of certain instincts ! 
" But there was in him such a love of light, 
sunshine, and living human poetry, such an or- 
ganic aversion to all that is ugly, or coarse, or 
discordant, that he made himself almost exclu- 
sively the poet of the gentler side of human na- 
ture. On the fringe of his pictures, or in their 
background, just for the sake of contrast, he will 
show us the vices, the cruelties, even the mire 
of life. But he cannot stay in these gloomy 
regions, and he hastens back to the realms of 



196 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the sun and the flowers, or to the poetical 
moonlight of melancholy, which he loves best 
because in it he can find expression for his 
own great sorrowing heart." 

I find myself copying the whole of this, — 
but you would like the whole preface : it is in an 
edition lately republished here by Macmillan, 
edited by Mr. Garnett. I did not know much 
of Turguenieff in earlier years, but there is 
all the greater pleasure in making one's self 
familiar now with all his work. I remember 
Mr. Howells asking me with great interest long 
ago when I had written the story of a " Land- 
less Farmer," if I knew Turguenieff' s " Lear 
of the Steppe " ; but I did not then or for a 
few years after. I confessed to Mr. Perry that 
I never was a Hawthorne lover in early life ! 
I am afraid now that it was a dangerous 
admission to have made to my kind essayist 
editor ! but I tell this also to you, since after 
what you said, it will not be without interest; 
we come to our work by strange paths — we 
hardly know how. It was hard for this per- 
son (made of Berwick dust) to think of her- 
self as a '' summer visitor," but I quite under- 
stand your point of view ; one maybe away from 
one's neighborhood long enough to see it quite 



LETTERS 197 

or almost from the outside, though as I make 
this concession I remember that it was hardly 
true at the time of " Deephaven." 

I must not try to write longer, but I shall 
be looking forward to seeing you. I hope that 
this may be when winter comes, for I hope to be 
well enough then to get to town. I can sel- 
dom think at all about the affairs of writing, 
of which my mind used always to be full. 
Once lately something made me turn to one 
of my stories — " The Only Rose " ; I read it 
to a young friend who wished to hear it, with 
a very strange feeling, because there it was, 
quite alive and well, even if its writer was no 
longer good for any writing at all. You will 
see by this what pleasure I could get from 
your serious and interested talk about all the 
stories; I liked to think that they were so 
alive to some one, and had given, or could 
still give pleasure. 

Believe me, with my best thanks and re- 
gards to so kind a friend, 

Yours most sincerely, 

S. 0. Jewett. 



198 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss l. p. loring) 

South Berwick, Thursday, 
November 3, 1904. 

My dear Louisa, — If you knew how much 
pleasure your note and the exquisite photo- 
graph gave me yesterday, you would never 
forbid my writing a word to say so ! I only 
wish you would come flying down like one of 
your own pigeons, out of the blue sky, so that 
we could talk as much as we wish about the 
Hermes. I find in the note that you felt there 
at Olympia just as I felt ! The light on the 
face in this photograph is nearest the real 
thing of any picture or copy of any sort what- 
ever that I know. 

Thank dear K. for her last note. I hope to 
see you both before winter gets very far, but 
my last grind of " headaches" and " the pre- 
vailing fall cold" on top of it have sent this 
slow patient down hill again. Never mind! 
there ought to be time enough for everything, 
taking this world and the next together ! 

Yours lovingly. 



LETTERS 199 

(to MRS, ALICE MEYNELL) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
December 14, 1904. 

My very dear Friend, — I have been 
thanking you in my heart all this time for the 
letter which came in the summer, just when I 
was most grateful for such pleasure of getting 
hold of your hand again. The letter and the 
beautiful Cowper preface came together: I 
was in retreat at the Mountains, staying alone 
in a journeying - friend's big country house 
with my nurse for many weeks, — the doctors 
had forbidden both writing and reading ; but 
on a long day it happened that by an odd 
chance, this letter of all letters, being for- 
warded with other things, dropped into my 
hands 1 I had to read it and read it and hold 
it fast to my heart, — the nurse looking on 
with true sympathy. One of the first things 
when she came, a stranger, and we were a lit- 
tle uncertain of each other's claws (!) I was 
fretting because I hadn't brought at least two 
or three books that I loved. I wished for your 
poems and almost cried as I said so. — "I Ve 
got that book in my trunk ! " said dear Miss 
0' Bryan with shining face, and we feared each 



200 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

other's claws no more ! She used to read to me 
a little now and then ; I never knew how I 
loved you, either in your work or out of it, be- 
fore that summer brought me a long way fur- 
ther into the country of our friendship. It is 
very strange to go through this long time of 
silence ; a strange loss of balance followed the 
terrible blow on my head, and I am not yet 
free from its troubles or from the attacks of 
pain in the back of my head. People say, 
"Can't you write a little?" but in nothing 
can that sense of balance count as it must in 
writing. I am stronger, I am even going to 
town presently. I am so often thinking of you 
in the long hours when I crochet instead of 
reading everything as one used ! I do read a 
little every morning now, in Santa Teresa's 
Letters, — and I pick up other things now and 
then for a little while, but my wits get blurred 
over, easily. Say that you and Mr. Meynell 
are coming over in the spring, when you write 
again ! And take all my heart's wishes for a 
happy Christmas for you and for those you 
love, dear. 



LETTERS 201 

(to miss DOROTHY WARd) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
December 14, 1904. 

My DEAREST Dorothy, — I have been look- 
ing through our dear Mrs. Whitman's letters 
to me, — of many years, — much beloved let- 
ters ! and this morning I happened to find one 
of yours which had strayed among them. You 
can hardly think with what true pleasure and 
delight I have read it, — a letter written just 
after you had left Levens. You will remember 
the afternoon on Cartmell Fell, of which you 
and Sally both told me; I wish that I could 
find her letter too, for I love to go back to it 
all. 

You should be here now, so that we might 
talk about that day and many other days. I 
wish very much to hear from you and to know 
what you are doing, as I did know then, 
dear. It is a very long time since I have 
seen Sally, — not since one afternoon last May,- 
which I dearly love to remember because I 
believe she was never closer to one's heart. 
This long pull of illness makes one feel a 
little like being dead! — for many months I 
could not read or write, and even now I find 



202 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

neither very easy; but things are mending 
slowly, and this week I am making the great 
adventure of going to Town for a little while. 
The temptations of Town are much greater 
than the temptations of dear Berwick, but it 
is good to have the change I am sure. And I 
shall see Sally just as soon as I can and tell 
you about her. Everybody is reading William 
Ashe and Lady Kitty as if they were alive and 
behaving nobly and excitingly before one's 
very eyes. The story is quite splendidly talked 
about even here in little old Berwick, and 
there is that pain when the new " number " is 
read and there must be a whole month's wait- 
ing for another one, which is the highest trib- 
ute to a great novelist. In the summer I was 
a long time in getting a " number " read, — 
by little pieces with sometimes days between, 
— and that taught me its quality, I can tell 
you. Please give my love, and my pride, too ! 
to your Mother. I feel sometimes as if nobody 
knew as well as I what a noble piece of work 
she can do ! Perhaps this is n't true, but no- 
body takes greater pleasure or pride. 

Yours ever lovingly. 



LETTERS 203 

(to MRS. fields) 

June 25, 1905. 

Here is another rainy Monday, much no- 
ticed in housekeeping. Yesterday was such 
a lovely day, and the strange thing to me was 
to remember how exactly the weather was like 
it last year, — the Sunday morning when I 
heard that dear S. W. had gone. I remember 
well that long bright day and the wonderful 
cloud I watched at evening floating slowly 
through the upper sky on some high current 
northward, catching the sun still when we 
were in shadows. I could not help the strange 
feeling that it had something to do with her. 
It was like a great golden ball or balloon, as 
if it wrapped a golden treasure ; her golden 
string (that Blake writes about) might have 
made it. Those days seem strangely near. 
After a whole year one begins to take them 
in. 

(to MRS. PARKMAn) 
South Berwick, Monday afternoon, 1905. 

My dearest Frances, — I now state (but 
with a strange pen found on Mary's desk) 
that ''Please send 2d Revise to'' is the form 



204 ^SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

of words, and after a bad night and day made 
doubly trying by little problems about these 
dear proofs.^ I begin to cheer up because you 
say that you will come on Thursday. We feel 
sadly provincial since the fast expresses have 
made a new schedule and go right by, but 
there is a nice 1.15 train to Dover where I 
could meet you, and if you can stay long 
enough, you can go to York by trolley (this 
bait has been used before without being no- 
ticed by Frances). 

I just opened an October "Spectator" that 
I had not seen, and here in a Review of 
the Queen's Letters some wise person says : 
"We realize of course that it is exceedingly 
difficult to print Documents or Letters entire 
owing to reasons of space. At the same time 
it cannot he doubted that a letter is a liv- 
ing thing with an individuality of its own, 
and if the head and tail are cut off, and two 
or three pieces taken out of the body, that 
individuality is lost.^^ This is my own strong 
instinct. I have felt Her at my elbow so often 
in reading these proofs that it has been hard 
not to follow our dislikes or preferences, but 
I would not for anything be prepotente, I 

1 Mrs. Whitman's Letters. 



^ LETTERS 205 

think we should think of the author first 
however in every case. That's our plain duty. 

But so few of us know what a stern judge 
prmt is in itself ; what a sifter and weigher 
of values, how astonishing its calm verdict 
when a book is done. None of these prelimi- 
nary stages can forecast it, and I do so want 
this to be Her best. What she would wish it. 
Too much choosing has cost the letters dear; 
they sometimes do not read like letters at 
all in these unrelated fragments. I cannot 
keep myself from thinking how beautiful she 
made them, each was like one of her own 
sketches. She brought all her Art to letter 
writing when she was at her best. She would 
say we must make them stand as well as we 
can. . . . 

This is only said to you by your loving 

S. 0. J. 

(to MBS. wheelwright) 

Manchester by Sea, 
Wednesday, 1th August. 

It is not because I do not think of you very 
often that I have not written ; but every day 
brings its succession of little hurries, and hours 
when one cannot write. And then I count 



206 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

more and more upon the truth that we can 
" think " to each other, when we are really 
friends, much better and often er than we can 
write. When they find out all about wireless 
telegraphy, they are going to find out how 
the little batteries in our heads send messages, 
and then we can do it by rule and not by ac- 
cident. It is very nice now, however, and we 
are n't called up by strangers as we may be in 
those later and more instructive days. You see 
that I am here, alone with Mrs. Fields, just 
now, though we had two young men for Sun- 
day, Mr. Woodberry and Mr. Greenslet (who 
wrote Mr. LowelFs life last year), and there 
was no end of talk about book affairs and espe- 
cially about Sicily, — Taormina, — where they 
had all three been. I listened as if I had been 
there too, having read them — and others. 
Mrs. Fields had six weeks at Taormina three 
years ago, and I know her point of view lit- 
erally and figuratively both. 

You have had a new sorrow in these days 
— it has been in my mind all the time I have 
been writing. I have had a feeling that it would 
touch you closely. It is hard to have people 
go when they take a piece of our lives with 
them. I have sometimes felt as if it were I 



LETTERS 207 

who died and stopped, and not they. " They 
are all gone into a world of light/' as 
Vaughan says (oh, that most beautiful poem !), 
but it leaves it darker here. 

I have just been sitting and thinking about 
you with my pen in my hand. I wish that I 
were nearer to you. "We could be out in the 
" Solace," and yet we need n't try to talk. 

(to MRS. fields) 

Yesterday I went to church and heard Dr. 
Lewis's sermon about the Queen, which was 
very well done, and there was a display of 
the English flags about a big picture of the 
Queen, and two wreaths of Berwick evergreens, 
tied with black! I have lived so much this 
last year in thought of the days when there 
was bitterest feeling toward England, that the 
sight of these things in the old meeting house 
astonished me more than it could have aston- 
ished anybody else in the congregation ; but 
it was a most pleasing sight. There are some 
English parishioners, mill people; I suppose 
the portrait — a big engraving of some sort 
— came in that way. I saw tears in many eyes, 
however ; the sermon was very touching, but 



208 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the whole feeling was as if some kind person 
had died in our own little neighbourhood. 

Monday morning — and what do you think 
is on this day but little Miss Grant's funeral, 
the poor soul having got through at last and 
suddenly. So Mary and I are going down to 
Portsmouth to the service, which is to be in 
the little hospital. I can't take it in that I shall 
see that lively, friendly, quaint, busy creature 
no more. My stories are full of her here and 
there, as you know, and she has made a great 
part in the rustic side of my life and so in the 
town side. Well, it is one of the moments when 
I am glad to think that there shall not be any 
more tears, neither sorrow nor sighing. 

Thursday noon. 

I have finished "Ivanhoe" and also a story 
of Ouida's which is called "A Village Com- 
mune" — a most powerful, harrowing story of 
the wrongs put by greedy of&cials on the Ital- 
ian peasants. There is not a trace of her vul- 
garity in this; it is as powerful a story, and 
strikes as straight at wrong-doing as Tolstoi's 
best — with all the knowledge of human na- 
ture and a lovely descriptive gift thrown in. 
Ouida is a great writer — when she is at her 



1 



LETTERS 209 

best, there is no getting over that fact. If she 
did n't lose her head, and — perhaps — were 
she not a woman, we should hear much more 
of Ouida ! particularly of her " Village Com- 
mune." 

Katie just brought up the " Herald," which 
comes earlier than the Post-office things, and 
I see that Owen Wister has been Telling the 
Truth ! Hurrah ! for they see what the mat- 
ter is, when all sorts of facts are being expen- 
sively crammed into boys' and girls' minds 
without making those minds grow, or enlarging 
the thoughts of the individual. I think the pro- 
cesses of exams, are at the bottom. There is 
something out of gear about graded schools 
and all that. Memory is developed at the ex- 
pense of what in general we are pleased to 
«all thought and character. 

Monday. 

I wish to tell you one thing, dear, that I 
knew Lieutenant Wallingf ord was killed, none 
better, but how could I write about him un- 
less I kept him alive? — There is something 
so strange now, that I can hardly believe it 
myself. I thought about him and his house 



210 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and the members of the family whom I have 
known, and made him a Tory and had Mary 

W challenge him to his duty, all out of 

my own imagination ; and on Saturday I got 
a package of notes from Mr. Buell in which it 
is proved that Wallingford was a Tory and 
his lady love declined to marry him for that 
reason ; at last he took her challenge and went 
to sea. He confessed to Paul Jones that he 
had come for a lady's sake and not from his 
principles. Part of this is told almost in my 
words of the story, as you shall see. Now how 
could I have guessed at his character, and what 
was likely to happen, and better ? Imagination 
is the only true thing in the world ! 

Yesterday I took up an old volume of 
Scott's " Lives of the Novelists," and read the 
brief sketches of Horace Walpole and Dr. 
Johnson and Goldsmith with great delight. 
He did them so lightly — with such ease and 
good sense. How one admires that great man 
more and more ! I must tell you that in 
a book of short essays of Edmund Gosse's 
that Louise Guiney gave me last Christmas, 
I found a very nice paper about Edward 
Fitzgerald. I always love that bit about his 
having been reading and lazily sitting in his 



LETTERS 211 

garden idly to watch things grow, "for which 
I think I shall he damned !^^ as he compla- 
cently adds. 

Monday morning. 

I had a really beautiful day yesterday. I 
stayed at home from church in the morning 
and took up President Eliot's life of his son, 
and I don't know when anything has moved 
me so much. You remember how beautiful 
the magazine paper was that President Eliot 
wrote about one of their island neighbours 
down at Mount Desert — and this is written 
with that same veracity and Defoe-like close- 
ness to the fact, and with such deep affection 
as one seldom feels in a book. I finished it last 
night, for although it is a big volume, much of 
the latter half preserves his own reports of 
work on tHe Metropolitan Park Commission, 
etc., which one does not need to know exactly, 
at least in the first reading, though this will 
interest you deeply. So I am sending it right 
over to you. 

The dining-room looks as it used now, and 
is so much pleasanter ! but when we had all 
the birds, the cardinal, and the charming 
sparrows, and all those, they were really 



212 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

very nice. I don't care much for any of these, 
especially since I came home this last time 
to find that dear bright wise little Bobby, 
father's tame little bird that he was so fond 
of, was dead and gone. There never was a 
little creature with so true and good a heart. 
He knew so many things — though not one 
trick ! and he would chirp at me until I an- 
swered and spoke to him, and then would 
sing himself to pieces. How often I have 
laughed and begged him to be still ; and now 
that live little voice is. still enough and its 
wisp of grey feathers. John and I put him 
into a little box, and buried him when no- 
body else knew it, down under the grass on 
father's grave, where so much sweet cheerful- 
ness lies still already. It was one of the dear 
links with those old days, you know, dear, 
and I can't help thinking that Bobby's spark 
of life is not put out altogether. 

Tuesday morning. 

What do you think I am reading but 
" Middlemarch," though I confess that I 
have to make skips often. How much more 
she dwells and harps than in " Adam Bede " 
and "Silas Marner." She draws her charac- 



I 



LETTERS 213 

ters so that they stand alive before you, and 
you know what they have in their pockets, 
and then goes on for three pages analyzing 
them and their motives; but after all one 
must read them with patience for the sake 
of occasional golden sentences, that have the 
exactness and inevitableness of proverbs. Per- 
haps I read my " Middlemarch " too late in 
the evening, but I find very dull stretches in 
it now and then. But think of Mr. Casaubon 
being but forty-five at the time of his mar- 
riage ! I think of him as nearly seventy and 
old for his years at that, and indeed he must 
have been growing old since he was born, 
and never have had a season of merely ripen- 
ing. It is a wonderfully drawn character to me, 
the pathos and reality of it. How I should 
like to go on talking about it. 

What do you think I am reading with 
deepest interest but Mahan's " Influence of Sea 
Power on History," which is perfectly delight- 
ful ! I don't know whether you would care 
much about it, though it is not too technical 
and nautical, but rather historical. One thing 
is so nice, about the fleets that are attacked 
having the best chance (according to the 
French). They stay in their places while the 



214 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

enemy comes at them, but wastes power in 
coming, and then, the principle holding good 
from the days of galleys until now, the at- 
tacked fleet has kept its power in reserve and 
its men fresh to resist. You get so interested 
before you know it. I have been interested 
in what I saw about the book for a long time, 
and I find it a great pleasure to have it. The 
use of English words is so fresh and good 
and the whole tone so manly and sailor-like. 

Well, I mustn't write about folkses this 
busy morning, but tell important tales about 
my walking up the garden yesterday after- 
noon, and hearing a great buzz-buzzing over 
among the apple trees, and seeing the whole 
air brown with a swarm of bees, and rushing 
for one of the old hives and trying to take 
them; but off they went, leaving part of 
their company about some comb which they 
had fastened on a bough of a tree, a thing I 
never saw before. Minnie, who is an experi- 
enced country person from Bantry Bay, as 
we have long known, came out ringing a bell 
as if she were one of those who took the 
bees in that pretty '' Georgic " of Virgil. 
There never was anything simpler or prettier. 
We got the remainder bees and their pieces 



LETTERS 215 

of white new comb into the hive, and there 
thej are, I suppose, in all the rain. I coveted 
the big swarm that went away. It was such a 
pretty, lucky thing to go out and find them. 



(to miss SARA NORTON) 

South Berwick, 
Monday, March 26 [1906]. 

Dearest Sally, — Today is town-meeting 
day and I am sitting by Mrs. Fields's desk at the 
front window (it has to move from the window 
where you knew it in winter), and it is very 
funny, beside giving rise to thoughts, to see 
the farmers and their country sleighs and their 
wives who come " trading " ! You may have 
seen an Ashfield town-meeting, but our east- 
ward region about Agamenticus " Mountain," 
between us and the sea, is still in a very old- 
fashioned state of mind — its expression in the 
men's dress is like early "Biglow Papers" 
times — fur caps made from what must be 
long extinct animals, but good common-sense 
rules the rulers for the most part ; and I should 
like to shake hands hard with two or three of 
them, and they would say, " Now which one 
o' the Doctor's girls be you ! " This is a nice 



216 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

neighbourhood : I wish that you (and I) knew 
it better. 

(to MRS. wheelwright) 

Sunday, at Mrs. Cabot's, 
Pride's Crossing [1906]. 

My dear Sarah, — I think of you and of 
writing to you every day, but it does not seem 
to have been good writing weather! I have 
been thinking as much of my days with you 
and with Frances, too, as of what I have been 
doing since. If there is a good wind I say to 
myself that we can go sailing in the "Hes- 
per." No matter if I am land-locked, I go on 
living with you as if I had never come away. 

I came here in time to see the Watteau fete, 
and felt as if Isabel quite belonged to me ! 
She was delightful in her part, and made a 
centre for the gay little crowd of players. The 
prettiest thing besides that was the classic 
touch : beside this foreground of gay French 
gentry there was a little group in the green 
field behind, at the edge of the sea, of a shep- 
herd with his pipe, a nymph who danced de- 
lightfully, and the small heathen god Eros, 
with his bow and arrows and a garment of 
leopard skin and green chaplet for his young 



LETTERS 217 

sunburnt head, with a sheep and a lamb that 
followed him when he followed the happy 
pair. The dance was charming, but at the 
close, when shepherd and nymph strayed away 
down the field to the sea and Eros strayed 
after, and the sheep and lamb after him, it 
made a live little procession that came right 
from a page of Theocritus ! I would give any- 
thing if you three had seen it with me. I should 
like to see the players among the blue-bells on 
your green turf at Sutton's Island — the place 
was made for such as they. 

I found the old address of my father and 
sent it to Mr. Wheelwright, but he must not 
vex himself by reading it — if it does not ap- 
peal. I was only interested to find how much 
my father had anticipated of the condition of 
things now in " practice," and especially the 
contempt of remedies, with which I have but 
little patience. It seems as if there were such a 
thing as Therapeutics, and as if it were just 
as ignorant to take too little medicine as to 
take too much. 



218 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 
Pride's Crossing, Sunday, August 5 [1906]. 
I am ending my summer visit to Mrs. Cabot 
on Wednesday, when I go to Mrs. Fields, and 
Miss Ellen Emerson is to be there on Wednes- 
day, too. I have really come back to some sense 
of pleasure in life ; though I feel like a dis- 
sected map with a few pieces gone, the rest of 
me seems to be put together right ! There are 
a great many delightful people to see, and I 
always delight in my visit here — each one is 
a treasure as it comes, and this was one of the 
perfect Sunday mornings when my dear old 
friend and I sat alone together and felt very 
near each other's heart. I must tell you what 
we read with great delight — the life of Miss 
Catharine Sedgwick ! We each passed it to the 
other to read some delightful page, and ^the 
other ' would read on in silence until a craving 
for sympathy made her unselfish enough to 
pass it back again. I did not know how good it 
was. I fancied it had been written in the dull 
time of " Memoirs," but I was quite wrong ; 
it was just as well to wait and grow a good 
deal older before I went back to it, and Mrs. 



LETTERS 219 

Cabot had not opened it for many years. It is 
a charming picture of my mother's and your 
grand-mother's New England. Mrs. Kemble's 
letter at the end is one to learn by heart. 
There is a page, too, about the advantages of 
country life, that made me '' fire up " about 
Berwick as I used in my best days ! There is 
another pleasure in being here. I often see 
Miss Caroline King, who was one of your 
Uncle James Lowell's early friends ; she talks 
about him more and more as she grows older, 
and yesterday, when I went to see her just at 
the other end of this short beach, she lent me 
a tiny volume of Shakespeare sonnets that he 
gave her in the early forties, with all his 
marks and bits of notes and a quotation from 
" Bussy d'Ambois " on the fly-leaf — all her 
youth and his are shut like a little flower be- 
tween the small covers — it is a dear little 
book ! I have seen it before, but yesterday 
she lent it, and touched it as if it were a 
flower still in bloom. They knew how to read 
poetry, that company of friends — their hearts 
were full of it. 



220 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

(to miss ELLEN CHASE) 

South Berwick, l^th February^ 1907. 

My deab Ellen, — I should like to have 
a word from you to know if you are well and 
not minding these huge heaps of snow ! I left 
Berwick as brown as a squirrel on all the hills, 
and came back to find it very white with snow. 
I wished to send a note to you to ask you to 
come in while I was in town ; but I was very 
unequal to things most of the time, and the 
good days when I dared to plan for a little 
more than the day was going to bring, were 
sadly few. Next time I hope to be more free, 
but when I have bad days with the pain in my 
head it makes so much trouble for other people. 

Do you feed the winter birds, and are there 
many of those hungry little companies this 
year? I don't see anybody but sparrows, and 
they seem to take such excellent care of them- 
selves, — one does have one's favorites among 
all two-footed beings ! 

I felt very much your kind sympathy at the 
time of my aunt's death. She is one to be 
most sadly missed — the last of my three dear 
grand-aunts, and they all died last year, and 
now their houses must all be shut, — dear and 



LETTERS 221 

beautiful and full of kindness ever since I can 
remember. I often say tbis to myself witb a 
thankful heart. It was wonderful to have kept 
them all so long. 

(to MRS. wheelwright) 

South Berwick, Maine, 
Monday, 1th May, 1907. 

Dear Sarah Wheelwright, — I meant to 
write you sooner, but last week, between, 1st, 
a cold going off, and 2d, a journey coming on, 
I was not good for much. I believe no longer 
in Habit, for why should writing be the most 
difficult thing now when I spent all my life 
once in doing it? Let us not discuss these 
things ! I have had such pleasure all the week 
in remembering last Sunday afternoon, and 
" the shrubbery " makes a background for 
many unrelated figures of this foreground. 
You gave me a great deal more pleasure than 
you knew in making that kind little plot. I 
thank my Club for its kind welcome, and I 
wish that I could appear on the 12th, but, as 
you thought, it won't do just now. I am not 
good for much, but what can be done must be 
done here — things are coming right up in the 



%%% SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

garden . I won't say that I can't leave home when 
the old asparagus-bed is in its early prime, be- 
cause you might think that quite low ; but the 
poplars must also be trimmed where the ice- 
storm broke them in March — you know how 
many little reasons go to making up big ones, 
and I have really been away a great deal lately 
from this dear old house, so that my sister and 
I plan many things together. I belong to the 
Club all the same, and I am sorry not to say 
yes when you ask me to do anything, having 
a deep sense of a true belongingness of friend- 
ship. It has been something very dear and 
happy in these late winter and spring days. 

How charming all this is about your neigh- 
bours ! the true and " simple life," full of such 
beautiful "lines" as you artists would say, 
genuineness and power of enjoyment; as I 
write this I wonder if a certain state of mind 
that we call power of enjoyment did n't go out 
of fashion when the old feeling of worship did 
in going to church. Life became such a mat- 
ter of opinions then ; but this is beyond me to 
write about. Most persons go round it in a 
circle and come back to saying that it is a 
matter of temperament ; but the garden is n't 
a matter of temperament, — it is an old plot 



LETTERS 223 

of ground where several generations have been 
trying to make good things grow. 

The sun must be shining in at your windows 
beautifully today. Do go to Lincoln, that 's 
the proper way to cope with busy gentlemen. 
Berwick and Lincoln are both better than 
down town. Good-bye ; I send you both my 
love. 



(to MR. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY) 

South Berwick, Maine, 2M August ^ 1907. 

Dear Mr. Woodberry, — Your letter 
found me here. — I meant for you to keep the 
two little books. I am sure that you will care 
enough for them — for reason of " Kenounce- 
ment " in one volume and " My Lady Pov- 
erty" in the other, if for nothing else! What 
a picture of Italy that last brief poem never 
fails to make before one's eyes ! I wish that 
we could talk about them while they are still 
fresh in your mind. 

What a joyful time it is to be close to the 
end of a long piece of work, and sad too — 
like coming into harbour at the end of a voy- 
age. The more one has cared to put one's very 
best into a thing, the surer he is to think that 



224 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

it falls far short of the " sky he meant." But 
it is certain that everything is in such work 
that we have put in. The sense of failure that 
weighs the artist down is often nothing but a 
sense of fatigue. I always think that the trees 
look tired in autumn when their fruit has 
dropped, but I shall remember as long as I 
remember anything a small seedling apple tree 
that stood by a wall in a high wild pasture at the 
White Hills, — standing proudly over its first 
small crop of yellow apples all fallen into a little 
almost hollow of the soft turf below. I could 
look over its head, and it would have been a 
heart of stone that did not beat fast with sympa- 
thy. There was Success ! — but up there against 
the sky the wistfulness of later crops was yet 
to come. 

(to miss SARA NORTON) 
South Berwick, Maine, November 12, 1907. 

My dearest Sally, — I have just tied up a 
little book for you. It may not ' like you ' as 
much as the " Hortus Vitse," but I find many 
charming things in it. I suppose that I am 
made like Vernon Lee; it gave me a little 
thrill the other day when I came upon this in 
still another book called " Limbo ": " As some 



LETTERS m5 

persons are never unattended by a melody, so 
others — and among them your humble serv- 
ant — have always for their thoughts and 
feelings an additional background besides the 
one which happens to be visible behind their 
head and shoulders." — I must lend you 
" Limbo " some day, or find it for you. I al- 
ways fancy that you may like, even better than 
I (because you are a closer friend), to have 
these brief sketches open their windows to- 
ward Italy. 

I ought not to write on and on to a busy 
autumn Sally in this way, but the thing I 
really had most in mind when I began was 
the story of an Indian summer afternoon last 
week, when I went on a little pilgrimage by 
trolley car down the Kittery shore, to a dear 
old house on the river just opposite Ports- 
mouth, where my sister and I used to visit a 
delightful old grand-aunt — by courtesy and 
of courtesy — when we were children. You 
go down a deep lane from the main road and 
(I ought to tell this to Dr. James) I was pos- 
sessed by a sudden terror of a huge New- 
foundland puppy who used to run and jump 
at me when I was six years old. I never have 
been so afraid of anything since. I was not 



226 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

thinking of him after a comparative safety of 
above fifty years. There 's a persistent sensa- 
tion for you! The old house was standing 
empty and somebody let us in to stay as long 
as we liked. It is a huge old place, I can't 
quite remember all the rooms now ! and the 
sun was shining in, and the dear ghosts : Aunt 
Anne and Cousin Marcia were both there. 
It is far too long to write after all, but the 
sound of Portsmouth bells across the water 
woke many things in my heart. And in the 
old garden, as if Aunt Anne would even now 
not let us go empty-handed away, there was the 
last old St. Michael's pear-tree that I know, 
with its harvest dropped for us on the grass. 
I wrote a story about this old house once, called 
"Lady Ferry," — it was when I was about 
twenty and still very young, and Mr. Howells 
would not print it. I can always show him the 
scar to his great amusement ! I put it into my 
second small book, " Old Friends and New," 
and you might just look at it ; I still think that 
he made a mistake (I can hear him laugh I), 
but it was my whole childish heart written in. 
I have only seen dear Mr. Howells two or 
three times all summer. They were just going 
away when Mrs. Fields was here, when he 



LETTERS 227 

generally comes up for an afternoon or so. 
He looks very well, I think much better than a 
year ago or two. Was not his " Atlantic " paper 
full of kind and delightful things, and Mr. 
Norton's so exactly right ! and Miss Francis's 
in the last " Contributors' Club " about Mr. 
Fields ; those were the days when I began ! 

Dear Sally, forgive all this, but I have 
been playing that I really saw you and your 
dear father. The trouble is that you have not 
known it and told me instead the things that 
I would so much rather hear. I am sure that 
you were both glad to get back to Shady 
Hill, and I hope that you are both equal to 
many pleasures and to the things you wish to 
do. You and Mr. Norton are two of my very 
dearest little company of friends; I can 
never help thinking of you both very often 
and always sending my true love. 

(to miss ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN) 

148 Charles Street, Boston, December 28. 

My dear Miss McCracken, — My last 
copy of your delightful book was just going 
to my friend Madame Blanc-Bentzon in Paris 
when you put this one into my hand ! — You 



228 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

see that I have — unconsciously, too ! — been 
behaving with it as some one else did with 
a certain book called " The Country of the 
Pointed Firs " ! And this I shall keep, with a 
great pleasure of thankfulness in remember- 
ing your kind thought of me. I wish to say 
what an excellent piece of work I believe 
"The Women of America" is : it has insight, 
which is a far rarer gift than the gift of ob- 
servation, and I am sure that it will help 
many a reader to understand things better. 
I am always saying to myself and often to my 
friends — I may have already repeated to so 
kind a friend and reader as you — Plato's 
great reminder that " the best thing we can 
do for the people of a State is to make them 
acquainted with each other." 

When I wrote to you before, I must have 
complained of being ill, and now I have the 
same hindrance still, — else I should beg you 
to come to see me some day very soon. I 
hope, however, to stay on in town for some 
little time and I am going to ask, at any rate, 
that if you should be in this neighbourhood 
on a winter day you will not pass the door. I 
am not able yet to say that I am sure to be 
equal to seeing any one at this hour or that, 



LETTERS 229 

— and put them to the trouble of refusal, — 
but now there are many afternoons as early as 
one chooses when I need not send the plea- 
sure of a friend away, — and once within this 
door I could show you many things you would 
care to see ! 

Believe me, with my best thanks and best 
wishes for a Happy New Year. 



Uthersyde, Northeast Harbour, Mount Desert. 

My dear Elizabeth, — Your note has 
reached me here, and indeed, indeed I send 
my most affectionate good wishes and bless- 
ing to you and Miss Marlowe. I am de- 
lighted with this plan, especially since you 
are going to see Italy in summer, — so few 
people do that who go travelling ! You will 
see the vintage coming on and the vintage 
comef and so much more of the true Italy of 
the poets, the out-of-door life and living 
beauty that they loved, than if you had a 
comfortable hotel life, keeping warm! in 
early spring. I hope that you will go to little 
plays in Venice, and see how many of the 
old traditions live. I wish that you could 
come north by Orange* and see a play there, 

1 In France. 



230 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and I cling to a deep desire that you should 
sit in the old historic playhouse in Paris be- 
fore you get back ! The " Theatre Frangais " 
ought to belong to both of you ! All this last 
is n't Italy, but the card I drop into my en- 
velope must carry you to the door of one 
who knows her and loves her with the best 
and most understanding love (I always in- 
sist that love is n't blind : it is only love 
that sees !). Miss Paget is Vernon Lee, and 
you will remember her exquisite " Ariadne in 
Mantua." I hope that she may be found at 
home, but at any rate you will have a charm- 
ing drive to the old villa just outside Flor- 
ence. I shall write her about you, so that this 
word on a card is very short (I can fancy Miss 
Marlowe beautifully in the Ariadne !). Do 
send me a word on your way, and put a twig 
of olive leaves into the letter. And direct to 
me at Manchester by Sea, where I expect to 
be by and by. 

I had a bad month with a second attack 
of grippe, but I am nearly mended after a most 
cheerful sailing cruise of eight days from 
Portsmouth here. You can't think how good 
it was to see the pointed firs and the shady 
coves again and the great wide reaches of 



LETTERS 231 

water between the green islands. yes, dear, 
this is just the right thing, your going, and 
your going together ! 

My sister sends you her love. 



(to MRS. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD) 

Manchester by Sea, Monday, 1908. 

My dear Hally, — I have been thanking 
you ever since your letter came, — you were 
so good and kind to write and I loved what 
you said. I found the verses among some 
things I was pulling out of a desk or drawer; 
I don't know in the least when they were writ- 
ten, but when I saw them in print I felt a 
little more alive in the world. Perhaps some 
day now, in the right place and with the right 
kind of quietness, I shall find myself begin- 
ning all over again; but it will be a timid 
young author enough ! We do have our long 
years' use of that strange little tool, the pen, 
to fall back upon, and that must count for 
something, — the wonder and uncertainty is 
about a "living spring," as country people 
would say, to come out of the hillside with 
proper water for the ink ! It was a day like 
this last year that you all three came over to 



232 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Berwick, and I wish you would do it again 
while Annie is there. With much love and 
many thanks for your dear letter. 



(to MRS. fields) 

Intervale, Sunday. 

Helen and I drove over to Miss Worme- 
ley's yesterday afternoon/ — a wonderfully 
beautiful afternoon, with such high, bright 
clouds and such a sunset, and the view from 
the house of most matchless beauty. She was 
there — all her atmosphere — her books on 
the table, her flowers all in bloom : it was a 
most sad and lovely and unforgettable visit. 
Only on Tuesday she was there — all day 
Tuesday I it seems so wonderful, that living 
creature, that friend! I kept saying to my- 
self those lines of Fitzgerald's in the " Aga- 
memnon": — 

" And some light ashes in a little urn." 
* After Miss Wormeley's death. 



LETTERS 233 

(to MRS. HUMPHRY WARD AND HER 

daughter) 

Manchester by Sea, Massachusetts, 
June 8, 1908. 

Dearest Mary and Dorothy, — This is 
just one word of love and thanks because you 
gave me the great pleasure of coming over, — 
of seeing you both again ! — and I feel quite 
selfish about it, as if no one else could care 
about seeing you and being with you again 
quite so much ! (This may be unjust to some 
dozens of people — but never mind ! You 
must just take my love and blessing and be- 
lieve how happy you made our dear A. F. 
and me.) She is much better now than when 
you saw her, the air here is always just the 
right thing, and I love to see her in her little 
pale grey dress sitting on the piazza looking 
seaward over the green tree-tops. She is tired, 
with getting away from Town more than from 
getting here, but she will soon be rested. 

I thought that you would have more days 
in Quebec; I wish you could spend a week 
there, — the old French country is delightful, 
but you have been seeing " Country " enough. 
Your dear heads will be in a whirl, between 



234 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

snow mountains and the early summer heat — 
I doubt if you even get time to read your let- 
ters until you begin the slow first days on 
ship-board. Good-bye, good-bye ! Don't you 
remember that Kingsley finished his book: 
" We cannot not have been in the West In- 
dies/' and so we cannot not have had you both 
here! and not have had fast hold of each 
other's hands again. You cannot know what 
joy and delight your visit has given. I do 
hope that neither of you are the worse for it. 
Yours with true affection. 

(to miss willa sibert gather) 

Manchester by Sea, August 17, 1908. 

My dear Willa, — I am delighted to 
have your letter. 

You will find that I sent a verse that I 
found among my papers to "McClure's," — 
and I did it as a sort of sign and warrant of 
my promise to you. No story yet, but I do 
not despair ; I begin to dare to think that if 
I could get a quiet week or two, I could really 
get something done for you, and it should be 
for you who gave me a " Hand up " in the 
spring ! 



LETTERS 235 

I wish that I could see you and that some- 
thing might bring you to Boston and for a 
night to Manchester. For more than a night, 
or as long as you could stay. Mrs. Fields bids 
me say this. 

I shall be here f ora fortnight now, or more. 
It is the time of year when people crowd the 
foreground of every background of shore or 
inland life, but it is also the time for quiet 
days together. I wish that I could see you, — 
I must write the words again ! 

Send me one word on office paper to say 
that you are getting on well. I envy you your 
work, even with all its difficulties. I wish that 
I could take a handful for my own hand, and 
to help you. 



(to MRS. HUMPHRY WARd) 

Manchester by Sea, Massachusetts, 
September 1, 1908. 

My dear Mary, — It has been the swift- 
est of flights of a summer ! I have been trying 
to solve the usual problem of trying to be in 
two places at once ; but besides this I had two 
pleasant cruises down the Maine coast, of a 
week or so each, with Mrs. Forbes, whom you 



236 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

will remember ; but I wish you knew the "Mer- 
lin " too, a big sailing yacht of great charm and 
spread of sail; and the Maine coast, since 
you only saw that of Southern New England, 
so low and quiet and different. Oh, no ! you 
have seen the St. Lawrence region, which is 
more like Maine ; the Pointed Firs, — the 
mountains near the shore ; the long Norway- 
like fiords and islands! 

I have the whole ^ back of my mind ' full 
of things that I wish to tell you, but I get 
so hindered about writing: not the "stop " in 
one's mind that Quakers gravely talk about, 
but something much less interesting. We are 
first of all so very anxious about dear Mr. 
Norton in these days ; Sally's letters are very 
troubled, poor child, but she said in her last 
letter that she hoped to get to Mrs. Fields's 
for a day and night very soon. She came 
twice with her father to Miss Sedgwick's in 
the very hot weather, but unluckily I was 
not here. I cannot give up the hope of seeing 
him again. For so many reasons I am thank- 
ful that you could come last spring. 

People are talking about "Diana," and 
those who wait for the book are finding it 
hard to wait. I think every one delights in 



LETTERS 237 

it. I am waiting, too, for the book to have it 
all again, and for next month's magazine 
number, I must also confess ! Mrs. Bell was 
wishing for it Saturday when she came up 
from the York Shore to luncheon. How I 
wish you had both been with her ! Was the 
house all as you wished, and the poor hurt 
man doing well? We have longed to know, 
but I waited at first to write because I knew 
you would both go home to such busy days. 
I see that " Lady Rose " is to be played at the 
Castle Square Theatre, and I shall hie me to 
see it with great haste. I was so sorry that 
you did not have the chance in London, but 
you might come over to Boston ! I must not 
write more, but to send my love. I am afraid 
not to seal up this poor note and send it off 
— next thing it will be Spring. 

Yours most affectionately. 

(to miss SABA NORTON) 

South Berwick, September 16, 1908. 
I am sending a little book chiefly for 



the sake of its biographical preface. I have 
delighted in knowing Lady John Scott, and 
just now I have been lending her to Mrs. Bell 
who made friends as quickly as I did. She is 



238 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

such a simple and real and dear person. The 
grandniece who writes the preface must be 
equally nice and delightful. I thought it might 
be something that you and your father would 
like to read together. Do not hurry, or trou- 
ble to send it back, — some day I can put it 
in my pocket. I am going back to Manchester 
tomorrow or next day; these last few days I 
have been quite alone and have done ever so 
many put-off things and comforted my soul. 
I was much amused the other day by a tale 
of some good housekeeping creatures who en- 
livened a tea party by trying to think what 
they should carry with them into another 
world if they could choose one precious thing, 
— and one chirped up that she should take 
an empty drawer that she had in the third 
story. You will guess by this what turn my 
poor energies have taken, but indeed I have 
had three or four extra good days, and hope 
for more. I do hope that dear Mr. Norton 
is better and stronger too. I think a great 
deal about him and wish many wishes. I al- 
ways forget, when I see him, to ask a ques- 
tion about a classmate, young Perry, whom I 
can just remember with deep childish affec- 
tion as he was going over to Italy in '54 or 



LETTERS 239 

'55, — his fair hair, his amusing, kind ways 
to his little niece. He was my mother's bro- 
ther, and died that very year abroad. I am 
afraid he was no student, though he studied 
law and had some gifts and ambitions toward 
political life. He was " wild," and I am afraid 
a little naughty, and he and Mr. Bigelow Law- 
rence kept each other's rather gay company. 
He had been abroad before and was twenty- 
eight when he died. These are nearly all the 
things I know about him, except that I still 
treasure the remains of a lovely Paris paint- 
box that he was bringing me home. What a 
long story about a poor young uncle ! I won- 
der if Susanina will preserve such memories. 
I must have been somewhere about five years 
old or a little less. He had been many months 
away. This Sunday I shall spend at Naushon 
and see the great beeches and the deer flicker- 
ing about. We saw two here this summer at 
the edge of some woods. I had been long 
hoping for such a sight. Mrs. Bell came up 
from York for luncheon last Saturday. Was not 
that delightful ? So well and so enchanting. 



UO SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



(to MRS. HUMPHRY WARD) 

Manchester by Sea, 
October 1, 1908. 

My dear Mary, — What I most wish to 
tell you is my delight in " Diana " ; you have 
indeed done everything to those last chapters 
in making them justify Diana! They do! 
They do ! I have been reading again and again 
with real admiration of your most noble and 
beautiful gifts, — the gifts of heaven — of 
sympathy and feeling and insight above all. 
That defeated old Lady Lucy, with the 
young strength and self - forgetful love of 
Diana coming in at the door ! There flits into 
my mind as I write a most lovely poem of 
Mr. Lowell's that begins, " How was I worthy 
so divine a loss?" I think some of the lines 
in it are so akin to all you felt about Oliver 
and Diana, — perhaps you would not say so. 
Could Oliver ever be selfish or a cad again, 
with such a love ? Ah, but he was selfish and 
must so continue, and must, thank Heaven, 
always be fighting and fall into worse shame 
when he cannot win. And her face would be 
shining more and more with the joy of watch- 
ing his poor victories. My heart is full of 



LETTERS 241 

your story, my dear friend. I miss you so as 
I write and wish that we were talking ; in- 
deed, I think we have never stopped missing 
you and dear Dorothy since you went away. 
Our last day, our last minutes always seem 
so close. 

(to miss SARA Norton) 

Tuesday morning, October, 1908. 

My dearest Sally, — It was a great joy 
to see your handwriting, — letters can give 
such a feeling of companionship. I have been 
longing for some news of your dear father, 
and I was planning last week to go to town 
and to Shady Hill to try to see you, but on 
Monday night dear Mrs. Fields was taken very 
ill, and for some days and nights I was most 
anxious. 

But we have begun our little pleasures, too, 
and yesterday and day before I read to Mrs. 
Fields awhile in Lucas's " Charles Lamb." We 
have been going through the first big volume 
this summer, and a chapter about all those 
friends whom she knows so well seems just the 
right thing. We have just got Coleridge home 
from Malta, and nobody in the book or out can 
think what to do with him ! What wonderful 



242 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

weather for us here and at Shady Hill. Last 
night came the first touch of frost. I see from 
the window that a row of zinnias are all brown, 
but the upper flower-bed is as bright as ever 
— all the friendly marigolds — and I shall 
have them tucked up with a blanket if it is 
cold again tonight. I must not write longer, 
but I think to you often and often with true 
love — you and dear Mr. Norton both. I have 
never been able to believe that wireless tele- 
phones were a new discovery; if you love peo- 
ple enough you can be your own battery, the 
only thing is to teach us how to use it, — so 
often it seems to go off by accident only. 
What a scientific turn this letter takes ! but 
never mind; it carries you much love and many 
wishes. 

(to MR. DAVID DOUGLAS) 

Manchester by Sea, Mass., October 20. 

My dear Mr. Douglas, — Day after day 
has gone by, warm and misty or rather 
smoky from the great forest fires that have 
so afflicted the country east and west. We are 
apt to have a wet, windy October and nearly 
all November like this, but it has been an un- 
usual summer in many respects, hardly any 



LETTERS US 

rain and yet little real drought. The farmers, 
who do not often dig their wells deep enough, 
are always afraid of the ground's freezing be- 
fore the great rains come, and having to drive 
their poor cattle far to water, but let us hope 
that all the springs will fill in season this 
year. We have seen Mr. and Mrs. Bryce lately 
— since their return from England. [The Em- 
bassy has had its summer quarters almost 
on the next place] and the Ambassador seems 
to feel little uneasiness about high affairs on 
either side the Atlantic. They are now away, 
so that we don't know how the latest affairs 
in Turkey, etc., affect his mind. He is a de- 
lightful man. Nobody could be more welcome 
to either his place of State or to his old friends 
in America. I have been wishing to ask you 
if it would be possible to find a copy of 
*^ Gleanings from an Old Portfolio," edited by 
Mrs. Godfrey Clark? I see that it was pri- 
vately printed, but sometimes such a book 
comes into the market. I was reminded of it 
by the list at the head of a paper in the July 
" Quarterly Review " about my favorite Lady 
Louisa Stuart. I always thank you for giving 
me the pleasure of what has been a true 
"book friendship." This year I have lost 



244 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

one of my dearest older friends, Miss Katha- 
rine Wormeley, who was of the Lady Louisa 
("guinea!") stamp and rank, a delightful 
"great lady," — daughter of an American mo- 
ther and an English admiral, who fought in 
the Peninsular Wars, and was already retired 
when his younger children were born. Miss 
Wormeley had seen much of the world all her 
days, but her last years were spent in a quiet 
house among our " White Mountains," where 
she busied herself with French translations, 
Balzac, etc., being wise enough to know that 
a hermit should not be idle! She lived as if 
she lived in London, but for months she heard 
few sounds beside the wind and the mountain 
brooks and the foxes barking on the hills. I 
delight in the thought of my visits to her. 
Lately I have been re-reading the preface of 
the " Lady John Scott," and delighting in it 
more than ever. Has " Margaret Warrender" 
who signs it written other things? — for this 
preface is a very uncommon piece of writing 
of that difficult and delicate sort. 

For how many pleasures I have to thank 
you, dear Mr. Douglas ! and I must beg for 
one more ; that we may hear from you soon 
and have good news of you and all your 



LETTERS M5 

household. I hope that Miss Douglas will be 
happening on a new sketching ground ; her 
work is so interesting and must provide you 
with many treasures and souvenirs. 



(to miss willa sibert gather) 

South Berwick, Friday, 27th November, 1908. 

My dear Willa, — I was glad to get your 
letter last night, and I was sorry to miss the 
drive to the station and a last talk about the 
story and other things ; but I was too tired — 
" spent quite bankrupt ! " It takes but little 
care about affairs, and almost less true plea- 
sure, to make me feel overdone, and I have to 
be careful — it is only stupid and disappoint- 
ing, but there it is, as an old friend of mine 
often says dolefully. And I knew that I was 
disappointing you, besides disappointing and 
robbing myself, which made it all the harder. 
It would have been such a good piece of a 
half hour! Emerson was very funny once, Mrs, 
Fields has told me, when he said to a friend, 
" You formerly bragged of ill - health, sir ! " 
But indeed I don't brag, I only deplore and 
often think it is a tiresome sort of mortifica- 
tion. I begin to think this is just what makes 



246 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

old age so trying to many persons. It seemed 
a very long little journey, and I could hardly 
sit up in my place in the car. I have never 
been very strong, but always capable of "great 
pulls." 

I expect to be here until Monday the seventh, 
unless dear Mrs. Fields should need me. I 
have just had a most dear and cheerful note 
from her, and we spoke by telephone last even- 
ing. She wrote me about the pink roses. 

And now I wish to tell you — the first of 
this letter being but a preface — with what 
deep happiness and recognition I have read the 
"McClure " story, — night before last I found 
it with surprise and delight. It made me feel 
very near to the writer's young and loving 
heart. You have drawn your two figures of 
the wife and her husband with unerring touches 
and wonderful tenderness for her. It makes 
me the more sure that you are far on your 
road toward a fine and long story of very high 
class. The lover is as well done as he could be 
when a woman writes in the man's character, 
— it must always, I believe, be something of 
a masquerade. I think it is safer to write 
about him as you did about the others, and 
not try to be he ! And you could almost have 



LETTERS 247 

done it as yourself — a woman could love her 
in that same protecting way — a woman could 
even care enough to wish to take her away 
from such a life, by some means or other. 
But oh, how close — how tender — how true 
the feeling is ! the sea air blows through the 
very letters on the page. Do not hurry too 
fast in these early winter days, — a quiet hour 
is worth more to you than anything you can 
do in it. 

148 Charles Street, Boston, Mass., 
Sunday, 13th of December. 

My dear Willa, — I have been thinking 
about you and hoping that things are going 
well. I cannot help saying what I think about 
your writing and its being hindered by such 
incessant, important, responsible work as you 
have in your hands now. I do think that it is 
impossible for you to work so hard and yet have 
your gifts mature as they should — when one's 
first working power has spent itself nothing 
ever brings it back just the same, and I do 
wish in my heart that the force of this very 
year could have gone into three or four 
stories. In the " Troll - Garden " the Sculp- 
tor's Funeral stands alone a head higher than 



248 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

the rest, and it is to that level you must 
hold and take for a starting-point. You are 
older now than that book in general; you 
have been living and reading and knowing 
new types ; but if you don't keep and guard 
and mature your force, and above all, have 
time and quiet to perfect your work, you will 
be writing things not much better than you 
did five years ago. This you are anxiously 
saying to yourself ! but I am wondering how 
to get at the right conditions. I want you to 
be surer of your backgrounds, — you have 
your Nebraska life, — a child's Virginia, and 
now an intimate knowledge of what we are 
pleased to call the " Bohemia " of newspaper 
and magazine-of&ce life. These are uncommon 
equipment, but you don't see them yet quite 
enough from the outside, — you stand right 
in the middle of each of them when you 
write, without having the standpoint of the 
looker-on who takes them each in their rela- 
tions to letters, to the world. Your good school- 
ing and your knowledge of " the best that has 
been thought and said in the world," as 
Matthew Arnold put it, have helped you, but 
these you wish and need to deepen and en- 



LETTERS 249 

rich still more. You must find a quiet place 
near the best companions (not those who 
admire and wonder at everything one does, 
but those who know the good things with 
delight !). You do need reassurance, — every 
artist does ! — but you need still more to feel 
*^ responsible for the state of your con- 
science" (your literary conscience, we can just 
now limit that quotation to), and you need 
to dream your dreams and go on to new and 
more shining ideals, to be aware of "the 
gleam " and to follow it ; your vivid, exciting 
companionship in the office must not be your 
audience, you must find your own quiet 
centre of life, and write from that to the 
world that holds offices, and all society, all 
Bohemia; the city, the country — in short, 
you must write to the human heart, the great 
consciousness that all humanity goes to make 
up. Otherwise what might be strength in a 
writer is only crudeness, and what might be 
insight is only observation ; sentiment falls to 
sentimentality — you can write about life, but 
never write life itself. And to write and work 
on this level, we must live on it — we must at 
least recognize it and defer to it at every step. 
We must be ourselves, but we must be our 



250 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

best selves. If we have patience with cheap- 
ness and thinness, as Christians must, we 
must know that it is cheapness and not make 
believe about it. To work in silence and with 
all one's heart, that is the writer's lot; he is 
the only artist who must be a solitary, and 
yet needs the widest outlook upon the world. 
But you have been growing I feel sure in the 
very days when you felt most hindered, and 
this will be counted to you. You need to have 
time to yourself and time to read and add 
to your recognitions. I do not know when a 
letter has grown so long and written itself so 
easily, but I have been full of thought about 
you. You will let me hear again from you 
before long? 

(to miss FRANCES MORSE) 

Friday afternoon [January 23, 1909]. 

Dearest Fanny, — I have just been to 
Berwick for a few days, and I thought I 
should certainly write to you, and then I 
did n't ! I don't often have one of the days 
when I couldn't do anything hut write, — 
but this five minutes seems quite unaccounta- 
bly to be mine this first afternoon in town. I 



LETTERS 251 

have wished to ask you if you have seen or 
would care to see a new story of Mr. James's 
— " The Jolly Corner " (it is a corner and was 
once jolly). There are lovely things in it and 
a wonderful analysis of fear in the dark, so 
that it may please you better by day than by 
night, as it did me ! I have been reading over 
again, too, Vernon Lee's " Hortus Yitae," and 
wondering if that were the book of hers that 
we talked about last year ; it is the one with 
the lovely dedication to Madame Blanc-Bent- 
zon. 

I chiefly wish to tell you about a drive yes- 
terday '^ down the other side of the river " ; 
the river frozen (the tide-river I mean now) ; 
the snow very white and thinly spread like 
nicest frosting over the fields, and the pine 
woods as black as they could be, — no birds, 
but the tracks of every sort of little beastie. 
They seemed to have been all out on visits 
and errands and going such distances on their 
little paws and claws; somehow it looks too 
much for a mouse to go half a mile along the 
road or across a field. Think how a hawk 
would see him ! I think we knew every track 
but one, — it had long claws like a crow's and 
a tail that never lifted ; — we settled upon a 



252 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

big old rat who had come up from an old wharf 
by the river-side. 

Dear Fanny, I do so hope that you are get- 
ting stronger ; being sick is fun compared to 
getting well, as dear Mr. Warner used to say. 
Do take long enough ; I have had such drear 
times trying to play well when I wasn't! 



And so the letters went on, with the flick- 
ering lights and shadows of human life re- 
flected on their pages, until she wrote one day 
in June, 1909 : " Dear, I do not know what to 
do with me ! " Then hope died ; we knew she 
could no longer stay with us, for like a little 
child, she had always planned some pretty 
scheme to cheer the paths of others, as well as 
her own, when the way was difficult. She rested 
on the spirit within her, which was not of her- 
self, and dared with a fearlessness that did 
not think on daring. She never put her doll 
away and always used her child-names, but 
her plans were large and sometimes startling 
to others. To herself her plans were joy- 
ous, every difficult time in life being met with 
a fine ingenuity of resource, until at the last 



LETTERS 253 

she sent the little plaintive cry, "I do not know 
what to do with me!" Then she was borne 
away from these human trammels and her 
young soul was free to move in the atmosphere 
of Divine Love. 



INDEX 



Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 
quoted, 9 ; Shaw's Folly, 79, 
80 ; letters to, 58, 69, 78, 87. 

Aldrich, Mrs. T. B., letters to, 
69, 89. 

Arnold, Edwin, India Revisited, 
25, 26. 

Arnold, Matthew, on the rela- 
tions of England and Ireland, 
22-24 ; George Sand, 38 ; Es- 
say on Celtic Poetry, 54. 

Austen, Jane, Persuasion, 185. 

Balzac, de, Honor^, The Alche- 
mist, 28. 

Barnes, William, Life of, 78. 

Barren, Miss, 35, 36, 37. 

Blanc, Madame, 66, 70 ; picture 
of, 76, 77 ; first meeting with, 
91 ; visit to, 143-150. 

Bourget, Paul, address on ad- 
mission to the Academic, 115, 
116. 

Bowdoin College, confers de- 
gree of Litt. D. on Miss 
Jewett, 178 ; memorial win- 
dow to Dr. Jewett, 178. 

Brewster, C. W., Rambles about 
Portsmouth, 72. 

Bridge-Guard, Kipling's poem, 
180. 

Brooks, Bishop, funeral of, 107, 
108. 

Bryce, James, 243. 

Cabot, Mrs., 123, 124. 

Carlyle, Thomas, Reminiscences, 



17, 83 ; on Edward Irving, 121, 
122. 

Cather, Willa Sibert, letters to, 
234, 245-250. 

Chase, Ellen, letters to, 119, 
127, 188, 193, 220. 

Clarissa Harlowe, 19. 

Coleorton letters (William 
Knight, Memorials of Coleor- 
ton), 77. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Cole- 
orton letters, 77. 

Country Doctor, The, 195. 

Country of the Pointed Firs, The, 
praised by Kipling, 9. 

Cuba, and the Spanish War, 150, 
151. 

Cushing, Elizabeth C, 31, 32, 
33. 

Darmesteter, Mary, Life of Re- 
nan, 129, 130. 

Deephaven, autobiographical 
preface, 7 ; characters in, 113. 

Diana Mallory, The Testing of, 
236, 237, 240. 

Dickens, Charles, Letters, 20. 

Donne, John, 60. 

Douglas, David, letters to, 103, 
182, 186, 242. 

Dresel, Louisa, letters to, 152, 
162. 

Du Maurier, George, 120, 159. 

Eliot, President, Life of his son, 
(Charles Eliot, Landscape Ar- 
chitect), 211. 



256 



INDEX 



Fields, Mrs. Annie, letters to, 

12-58, 59-68, 70-78, 80-86, 90, 
101, 102, 110, 116, 121, 128, 165, 
177, 184, 203, 207-215, 232. 

Fitzgerald, Edward, Edmund 
Gosse on, 210. 

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bo- 
vary, 81, 82. 

Freeman, Edward Augustus, as 
a correspondent, 40. 

Funeral, a country, 70, 71, 80. 

Grande Chartreuse, 97, 144, 145. 

Grant, General, greatness of, 28, 
29. 

Grant, Miss, the village dress- 
maker, 37, 208. 

Gray Man, The, 19, 20, 39. 

Harvard College, Class Day, 
176, 177. 

Haworth, 157, 158. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Ameri- 
can Note-Books, 72, 73. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 104. 

Howe, Mrs. George D., letters 
to, 91, 97, 100, 105. 

Howells, William Dean, 226, 
227. 

Huntington, Miss A. O., letter 
to, 113. 

Irving, Edward, Mrs. Oliphant's 
Life of, 121, 122, 130. 

James, Henry, The Way it Came, 

186, 190 ; The Jolly Corner, 251. 
James, William, The Value of 

Saintliness, 90. 
Jefferies, Richard, The Story of 

My Heart, 71, 72. 
Jewett, Caroline F., mother of 

S. O. J., death of, 102. 



Jewett, Sarah Orne, birth and 
childhood, 4 ; interest in med- 
icine, 5, 6, 14; as a letter- 
writer, 6 ; dignity of charac- 
ter, 9; attitude toward her 
work, 10, 19, 39, 52, 62, 81, 118, 
221 ; sympathy vdth nature, 
13, 24, 25, 41, 45, 48, 51, 57, 
58, 61, 64, 76, 98, 136, 138, 
140, 224, 251 ; love of wild 
creatures, 30, 44, 45, 74, 115, 
116, 117, 147, 214, 220, 251 ; 
fondness for dogs, 46, 62, 66, 
67, 75, 101, 147; travels in 
France, 91, 97-100, 137-156, 
in England, 92-97, 136, 156- 
160, in Italy, 100, 169, in 
the West Indies, 161-164, in 
Greece, 171-176; death of her 
mother, 102; receives degree 
of Litt. D. at Bowdoin, 178; 
death of, 3, 252. 

Letters : to T. B. Aldrich, 
58, 69, 78, 87; to Mrs. T. B. 
Aldrich, 69, 89 ; to Willa Si- 
bert Cather, 234, 245-250 ; to 
Ellen Chase, 119, 127, 188,193, 
220; to David Douglas,103,182, 
186, 242; to Louisa Dresel, 
152, 162 ; to Mrs. Fields, 12- 
58, 59-68, 70-78, 80-86, 90, 
101,102,110, 116,121,128, 165, 
177, 184, 203, 207-215, 232; 
to Mrs. George D. Howe, 91, 97, 
100, 105 ; to Miss Huntington, 
113 ; to Rose Lamb, 117, 135 ; 
to Louisa P. Loring, 198; to 
Elizabeth MeCracken, 227, 229; 
to Mrs. Alice Meynell, 199 ; to 
Frances Morse, 250; to Sara 
Norton, 122-127, 132, 134, 136, 
137, 145, 160, 169, 176, 179, 
181, 183, 188, 192, 215, 218, 



INDEX 



257 



224, 237, 241 ; to Mrs. Henry 
Parkman, 189, 190, 203; to 
Harriet Prescott Spofford, 
184, 231; to Charles Miner 
Thompson, 194; to Dorothy 
Ward, 166, 201, 233 ; to Mrs. 
Humphry Ward, 233, 235, 
240 ; to Mrs. Wheelwright, 205, 
216, 221 ; to Mrs. Whitman, 
92-97, 108, 111, 112, 114, 129, 
130, 140, 143, 155-160, 161, 
171-176 ; to George E. Wood- 
berry, 88, 223. 

Jewett, Dr. Theodore H., father 
of S. O. J., 4, 5, 16, 61, 195, 
217 ; memorial window to, at 
Bowdoin College, 178 ; his pet 
bird, "Bobby," 212. 

Jowett, Benjamin, Life and Let- 
ters of, 111, 126. 

King, Caroline, 219. 

Kipling, Rudyard, on The Coun- 
try of the Pointed Firs, 9; his 
Bridge-Guard, 180. 

Lady Rose's Daughter, 97. 
Lamb, Rose, letters to, 117, 135. 
Lee, Vernon (Miss Paget), 230; 

Hortus Vitce, 251. 
Lodge, Mrs. James, 21, 34. 
Longfellow, Henry Wads worth, 

influence of, 14, 15. 
Lord, Dr. John, 52, 53. 
Loring, Louisa P., letter to, 198. 
Lowell, James Russell, 85, 86 ; 

A Id rich's poem in memory of, 

87 ; Woodberry's essay upon, 

88. 
Lucas, E. v., Charles Lamb, 241. 

Madame Bovary, 81, 82. 
Mahan, Ca,^tam, Influence of Sea 
Power on History, 213, 214. 



Marigold, pet name for Mrs. 
James Lodge, 21, 34. 

Marriage of William Ashe, The, 
202. 

Marsh Island, A, 20. 

McCracken, Elizabeth, letters to, 
227, 229. 

Meynell, Mrs. Alice, 181 ; appre- 
ciation of S. O. J., 11 ; letter 
to, 199. 

Middlemarch, 212, 213. 

Miss Angel, 67. 

Mitchell, S. Weir, Hugh Wynne, 
31. 

Modjeska, Madame, 160. 

Morse, Frances, letter to, 250. 

Nassau, 161, 162. 

Norton, Sara, letters to, 122-127, 
132, 134, 136, 137, 145, 160, 
169, 176, 179, 181, 183, 188, 
192, 215, 218, 224, 237, 241. 

Oliphant, Mrs., Royal Edin- 
burgh, 56, 57; Life of Edward 
Irving, 121, 122, 130. 

"Ouida," A Village Commune, 
208, 209. 

Parkman, Mrs. Henry, letters to, 

189, 190, 203. 
Peabody, Andrew Preston, 86. 
Pearl of Orr's Island, The, 18, 

46, 47. 
Perry, Bliss, 187. 
Perry, Nathaniel Oilman, uncle 

of S. O. J., 238, 239. 
Persuasion, 185. 
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 73. 
Preston, Harriet W., 42 ; Pliny 

the younger, 29. 

Queen's Twin, The, 169. 



258 



INDEX 



Bambles about Portsmouth, a 
mine of wealth, 72. 

Riggs, Mrs. (Kate Douglas 
Wiggin), 183. 

Kousseau, Jean Jacques, Con- 
fessions, 33. 

Budin, Turguenieff's, preface 
by Stepniak, 195. 

Rumford, Benjamin, Count, 84, 
185, 186. 

Sand, George, Arnold's essay 
on, 38; letter to Madame 
d'Agoult, 75. 

Sandpiper, pet name for Celia 
Thaxter, 21, 34, 44, 108, 109, 
110. 

Scott, Lady John, 237, 238, 244. 

Scott, Sir Walter, Lives of the 
Novelists, 210. 

Sedgwick, Catharine, Life of, 218. 

S^vign^, de, Madame, Chateau 
de Grignan, 138, 139, 142, 156. 

Shaker community at Canter- 
bury, 134. 

Shaw's Folly, T. B. Aldrich, 79, 
80. 

Spanish War, 150, 151. 

Spofford, Harriet Prescott, let- 
ters to, 184, 231. 

Swedenborg, 21, 22. 

Teaby, Mr., the real, 57. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 28, 94, 95; 

visit to, 101, 102 ; Life of, 130, 

131. 
Thackeray, Anne (Mrs. Ritchie), 

67, 192. 
Thackeray, Wm. Makepeace, 

Pendennis, 30, 31, 42 ; Vanity 

Fair, 55, 56. 
Thaxter, Celia, 21, 34, 44, 108, 
109, 110. 



Thompson, Charles Miner, At- 
lantic paper on S. 0. J., 194, 
195 ; letter to, 194. 

Tolstoi, Leo, Count, influence of, 
38, 39. 

Torcello, 100, 101. 

Tory Lover, The, 180 ; Lieutenant 
WaUingford in, 209, 210. 

Two Years before the Mast, 75. 

Victoria, Queen, 207; Letters, 

204. 
Village Commune, A, by "Ouida," 

208, 209. 
Voltaire, de, Frangois, 68. 

WaUingford, Lieutenant, in The 
Tory Lover, 209, 210. 

Ward, Dorothy, letters to, 166, 
201, 233. 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 95 ; let- 
ters to, 233, 235, 240. 

Watson, William, A Prince's 
Quest, 86. 

Week away from Time, A, 189. 

WeUs, Maine, fisherman friends 
of Miss Jewett at, 26-28 ; a firsts 
rate place to find stories in, 60. 

Wheelwright, Mrs., letters to, 
205, 216, 221. 

Whitby, 159 ; photographs of, 
119, 120. 

White Heron, A, 60. 

Whitman, Mrs. Henry, 106, 107; 
Letters, 204, 205 ; " a little ser- 
mon called Happiness,^'' 189; 
letters to, 92, 108, 111, 112, 
114, 129, 130, 140, 143, 155- 
160, 161, 171-176. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 128, 
129. 

Wilson, John, Genius and Char- 
acter of Burns, 50, 51. 



INDEX 



259 



Wister, Owen, 186, 209. 

Women of America, The, by Eliz- 
abeth McCracken, 227, 228. 

Woodberry, George E., letters 
to, 88, 223. 

Wordsworth, Dorothy, Tour in 



Scotland, 44; Coleorton let- 
ters, 77. 

Wordsworth, William, 66 ; Cole- 
orton letters, 77. 

Wormeley, Katharine Prescott, 
232, 244. 



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